I wrote last month that it was some time since I'd heard an audience laugh as one. Well, I did in the packed West End cinema where I saw this satire on third-world dictatorships — great gales of laughter, which had about them a sense of relief, of pressure being let out. 

Baron Cohen makes a point of mocking the various strictures and platitudes of political correctness, so those who live to be offended on behalf of others will find plenty of sustenance here. Few groups, races or creeds are let off the hook, although here he is especially funny at skewering happy-clappy victim-fixated liberals.   

Borat and Bruno, his two earlier efforts, made you wince and squirm at their Candid Camera approach, but recoil too from their cruelty and crudeness. His latest movie has a more straightforward, scripted approach, and actually works better.

It is too even-handed to be politically partisan, and this is sometimes irritating: there are some prolonged digs at America, which you sense have been added so as not to appear too right-wing or racist, and they're also some of the weaker gags.

 But it is not required of satire to be "balanced" — indeed it would be the death of it. Rather than mocking everybody, Baron Cohen would be most effective if he chose one target and stuck to it. Meanwhile, however, he remains one of the few really watchable comic actors on screen.