MOVIE REVIEW: Rock the Kasbah

Bill Murray in Rock The Kasbah. Picture: Supplied

Bill Murray in Rock The Kasbah. Picture: Supplied

Published Nov 27, 2015

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ROCK THE KASBAH

DIRECTOR: Barry Levison

CAST: Bill Murray, Kate Hudson, Bruce Willis, Scott Caan, Leem Lubany, Danny McBride

CLASSIFICATION: 13 L

RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes

RATING: 2 stars (out of 5)

Theresa Smith

BILL Murray channels Bill Murray-lite in this would-be musical comedy set in Iraq. There is music, the laughs are far and few between and character development is just about nil, but hey, it’s Bill Murray and his fans love him.

Murray plays a loveable rogue, as he so often does, this time world-weary music agent Richie Lanz stranded in Iraq. Lanz’s last client has absconded with his money and passport and he finds himself doing a questionable deal in the desert on behalf of two profiteers (McBride and Caan doing some undercover work in keeping with his Hawaii Five-0 character) accompanied by trigger-happy mercenary in search of a book deal, Bombay Brian (Willis).

Deep in the Paktia Province Lanz “accidentally” discovers a girl with a wonderful voice. While Salima (Lubany) only knows Cat Stevens’s tunes, she really wants to be on a show called Afghan Star and Lanz uses his persuasive skills, and a little help from hooker with an excellent nose for business, Merci (Hudson) to make it happen.

Considering this is from Barry Levinson, director of Wag the Dog and Good Morning Vietnam, the tonal inconsistencies are odd. Where Wag the Dog was consistently satirical, skewering its politicians and realpolitiks with plenty of cynicism, Rock the Kasbah does not quite mix war and comedy with succesful results.

It starts off various sub-plots and then lets them die a quiet death in the desert and for some unknown reason takes the story of the young would-be Afghani pop star and turns it into Bill Murray’s story.

Characters get introduced and then disappear – Zoey Deschanel starts off intriguing as Lanz’s last client but then goes off to Dubai, never to be seen again.

The two profiteers played by Caan and McBride seemed to be a stab at mocking this idea that the US occupation of Iraq has a noble purpose because all they are about is the cash, but that little light flickers for only a moment and then the two fall off the screen.

Early on in the film Lanz’s little daughter points out that a) no musicians tour Iraq and b) the kasbah is a north African term, not Middle Eastern.

Lanz blithely disregards these distinctions as easily as Levinson discards the nuances of what people in Iraq could be like (he gives us some patronisingly stereotypical characters in the form of Salima’s father shouting about honour kills and portrays all Afghani men as terrorists of one kind or another).

Leem Lubany doesn’t get to do much as the potential music star, other than stand in front of a mike, because this turns out to be not Salima’s story.

About the only thing that keeps your attention is Murray, with his unabashedly weird rendition of Smoke on the Water to a bemused lot of Pashtun men pretty much the highlight of the performance.

Begin Again did “young female performer redeems burnt-out music manager” better and if you want to see a more nuanced Murray check St Vincent, Broken Flowers or Groundhog Day.

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