LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Sacha Baron Cohen’s Kazakh alter-ego Borat made glorious returns at the box office, surprising Hollywood with a No. 1 debut. "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," 20th Century Fox’s big-screen incarnation of Cohen’s Kazakh journalist from "Da Ali G Show," took in US$26.4 million during its opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday.

"This picture was playing to full houses," said Bruce Snyder, head of distribution at 20th Century Fox. "The planets aligned, the moons aligned, the stars aligned, and everything came together perfectly for us on this weekend."

Box-office analysts had expected Disney’s "The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause," with Tim Allen returning as St. Nicholas, to win the weekend. It was No. 2 with $20 million, followed by the Paramount-DreamWorks animated comedy "Flushed Away" in third place with $19.1 million.

With great Internet buzz and a built-in following from "Da Ali G Show," "Borat" succeeded where another cyber-sensation, "Snakes on a Plane," failed. "Snakes" opened last summer to modest crowds despite months of Internet hoopla.

The raucous, raunchy "Borat" follows the adventures of British comedian Cohen’s TV journalist from Kazakhstan in a blend of fiction and improvised comic encounters as he travels the United States, meets and mocks Americans and reports back to his home country.

"It is what you go to the theatre for," said Hutch Parker, the studio’s head of production. "You get that infectious, outrageous, interactive experience. There are people yelling at the screen, there are cheers."

"Borat" played in only 837 theatres, fewer than one-fourth the count for "The Santa Clause 3" and "Flushed Away." Averaging a whopping $31,511 a theatre, "Borat" easily outdistanced "The Santa Clause 3," which averaged $5,784 in 3,458 cinemas and "Flushed Away," which averaged $5,152 in 3,707 theatres.

Fox plans to expand "Borat" to as many as 2,500 theatres this Friday.

"The Santa Clause 3" pits Allen’s St. Nick against Jack Frost (Martin Short) as they battle for control of Christmas. "Flushed Away" features the voices of Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet in the story of a pampered pet mouse forced to make his way among sewer rats.

The two movies split the family audience, but their opening weekends were solid starts for the holiday season. Disney and Paramount expect their movies to hang tough through year’s end, even with the Warner Bros. animated penguin tale "Happy Feet" coming just before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday.

"The Thanksgiving holiday is going to be just rocking," said Disney head of distribution Chuck Viane.

The previous weekend’s top movie, Lionsgate’s horror sequel "Saw III," held up solidly at No. 4 with $15.5 million, raising its 10-day total to $60.1 million.

However, the strong crop of new movies and holdovers did not quite stack up to the same weekend a year ago, when "Chicken Little" opened at No. 1 with $40 million and "Jarhead" debuted at No. 2 with $27.7 million. This weekend’s top 12 movies took in $116.2 million, down three per cent from the same period last year.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theatres, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," $26.4 million.

2. "The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause," $20 million.

3. "Flushed Away," $19.1 million.

4. "Saw III," $15.5 million.

5. "The Departed," $8 million.

6. "The Prestige," $7.8 million.

7. "Flags of Our Fathers," $4.5 million.

8. "Man of the Year," $3.8 million.

9. "Open Season," $3.1 million.

10. "The Queen," $3 million.

TORONTO (CP) _ Borat Sagdiyev, the fictional character at the centre of the new comedy "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," is ridiculously anti-Semitic.

The movie, opening Friday, features a "running of the Jew" segment back in Borat’s home village in Kazakhstan that would be astonishingly offensive if it were not so ludicrously funny. On the Comedy Network’s "Da Ali G Show," Borat once took to the stage at a country-and-western bar in the southern United States and performed a song called "Throw the Jew Down the Well" as the rednecks sang along and cheered.

Yet far from being outraged, some of the most creative and powerful Jews in Hollywood are big fans of the film _ including Larry David, Garry Shandling and Larry Charles, the legendary Seinfeld writer who directed the Borat movie. Borat is the creation of British comic Sacha Baron Cohen, himself a Jew.

"I see Borat as a bit of a folk hero or even a superhero," Seth Abramovitch, a Montrealer living in L.A. and one of the brilliant minds behind the gossip blog "Defamer," said Thursday.

"Most Jews assume there’s still anti-Semitism lurking everywhere _ even here in Hollywood _ but it may take a random traffic stop in Malibu for it to bubble to the surface. Borat has a secret identity _ Sacha Baron Cohen, who we know is an observant Jew _ but then he changes into his Borat costume and completely transforms himself into a naively likable Jew-hater, flying around the world to ferret out anti-Semitism wherever it may be hiding."

The great thing about the film, says Mark Breslin, the Canadian comic behind the Yuk-Yuks nightclubs, is that it exposes anti-Semitism for exactly what it is _ the product of supreme stupidity, he says.

"Since the character of Borat is an ignoramus, everything he does is seen as being ignorant. So Sacha Baron Cohen is equating anti-Semitism with ignorance, and knowing that, it becomes an attack not on Jews but on people who dislike or hate Jews. The movie makes anti-Semitism look stupid."

In the United States, however, some human rights organizations haven’t been quite so enthusiastic, saying Borat goes too far in his cheerful anti-Semitism. The Anti-Defamation League issued a statement last month saying that, while it understands that point Baron Cohen is trying to make about the ignorance behind racism, it fears "the audience may not always be sophisticated enough to get the joke."

Breslin disagrees.

"The kind of people who would go see an independent comedy are smart enough to get the joke," Breslin said. "Audiences are quite intelligent who go to things like comedy clubs and movies like ‘Borat.’ They’re smart enough to know when the motive is hateful, and when the motive is more satiric."

Len Rudner of the Canadian Jewish Congress says Borat is unveiling real anti-Semitism wherever he goes, not encouraging or celebrating it.

"He exposes the follies of others," Rudner says. "People ought not to take offence about the follies he’s exposing; they should be taking offence that they exist."

Indeed. For Abramovitch, the film also serves to remind Jews that far from being a thing of the past, anti-Semitism is still alive and well.

"There’s something comforting about seeing a saloon full of rednecks clapping and singing along about grabbing us by the horns and throwing us down a well," he said. "The laughter is as much a nervous release as it is a natural reaction to a genuinely hilarious situation. It’s a deceptively dark variety of comedy that tells Jews that their lingering sense of unease, no matter how settled or assimilated we think we may be in 2006 America, is still very much justified."