Susan Granger’s review of “Rock the Kasbah” (Open Road)
Bill Murray is amusing – albeit briefly – as Richie Lanz, a once-famous, ‘60s-era music manager who now operates out of a dilapidated motel room in Van Nuys.
Times are tough, so when he gets an offer to book his last remaining client/secretary Ronnie (Zooey Deschanel) on a USO tour in Afghanistan, they’re on the next flight to Kabul.
Problem is: when Ronnie realizes that she’s in a bombed-out, war-torn country, she freaks out, abandoning Richie without his wallet or passport.
As luck would have it, Richie befriends a pair of opportunistic American arms dealers – Nick (Danny McBride) and Jake (Scott Caan) – and a sympathetic mercenary, Bombay Brian (Bruce Willis), which leads to his becoming the houseguest of a fierce Pashtun chief whose daughter, Salima (Leem Lubany), is a talented singer; her ambition is to perform on an Afghanistan talent show.
And that’s when Richie’s not otherwise occupied with Miss Merci (Kate Hudson), who runs a brothel out of a double-wide trailer on the streets of Kabul.
Very loosely inspired by the true story of Setara Hussainzada, the first woman to defy convention by discarding her hijab to sing and dance on TV’s “Afghan Star,” Afghanistan’s version of “American Idol,” it’s scripted by Mitch Glazer (“Scrooged”) and directed by Barry Levinson, who did social satire/political farce much better in “Good Morning, Vietnam” and “Wag the Dog.”
Filmed in Morocco, Murray’s most memorable moment occurs when he’s singing “Smoke on the Water” a cappella during a dinner in the desert. Murray sang before in “Stripes” (1981) and “Lost in Translation” (2003), but none of this compares with the hilarity of Murray’s “St. Vincent” (2014).
FYI: After the U.S. drove the Taliban out of Kabul, “Afghan Star” became a popular symbol of secular culture – and its tumultuous history is chronicled in the 2009 documentary “Afghan Star.”
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Rock the Kasbah” is a silly, sluggish 4 – only sporadically funny.
