Richie’s “business” partner and sole client is one Ronnie Smiler (Zooey Deschanel), though he hasn’t done much for her career besides book her a weekly gig doing covers at a strip-mall dive bar.
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Director Barry Levinson’s latest picture, with a script by Mitch Glazer, was partly inspired by the true story of Setara Hussainzada (name-checked in the closing credits, though her equivalent character in “Rock the Kasbah” is fictional). Richie bumbles through various misadventures, and eventually, almost an hour into the movie, he discovers Salima (Leem Lubany), a shy Afghan teen with a lovely singing voice, and resolves to make her a star. There is no more mention of Ronnie. There is no further discussion of the USO tour. We enjoy his comic genius when he tries to negotiate with Afghan village leaders (who don’t understand a word he says), or when he performs “Smoke on the Water” for them at a feast.
The film’s convoluted plot hinges on a series of meet-cutes with various supporting characters who only serve to deposit Richie more firmly into bizarro territory. She’ll appear in Murray’s upcoming holiday special and popped up in a faux rock doc to promote Rock the Kasbah. Hudson’s hooker with a heart of gold initially propositions Richie – and he pays, as evidenced by his later emergence from her double-wide trailer to a waiting line of paying customers, all of whom he gleefully tells, “it’s worth the wait!” – before joining forces with him as part of a very artificial-feeling stab at female empowerment. Rock the Kasbah isn’t respectful of truth, or consistently amusing in the way it lies. And the scene when the host of “Afghan Star” scolds Richie for lecturing him provides an ounce of what “Rock the Kasbah” needs in pounds. It still might have a chance after the shift in stories, but the movie never gives Lubany enough space to create as fully realized a character as it ought, and as the new tale requires. There’s Riza (Arian Moayed), his instantly game cab driver turned translator. (It’s about half Lost In Translation and half Scrooged-sad, broken Murray paired with irredeemable scumbag Murray.) Bruce Willis is made to play another squinty tough guy, though at least he looks like he’s having a few fun doing it. And Danny McBride and Scott Caan play a pair of arms-dealing broheims who could have wandered in from a Seth Rogen buddy comedy. And to show up wearing a bindi, in case viewers weren’t already cringing at how this movie handles race and ethnicity.
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Bill Murray’s making broad, sloppy comedies again. Rock the Kasbah puts that truism to the test, though, and comes dangerously close to proving it wrong.
