Rumors are circulating that Jenny Lewis and Bill Murray are dating after the indie pop star joined Murray at his Rock the Kasbah release party Tuesday night in New York. There are promises of money, promises of a return to glory for Richie, promises of a brighter road ahead. They take him on a winding night ride to an expats club and for a moment a better movie threatens to break out, but Hudson is at the club, swimming languidly while wearing a diaphonous gown because what else would a high-class hooker do in Afghanistan? “Rock the Kasbah” is a muddled mess of a feature that struggles to retain narrative threads and believable character motivations.
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This miraculous vocal instrument is possessed by a attractive teenage Pashtun girl, Salima (Leem Lubany), who wears traditional garb and must go to this isolated place to enjoy the pleasure of singing; her strict conservative father would have her hide if he found out.
It’s at this point, at least an hour into the film, that one realizes just how many ludicrous narrative contrivances the filmmakers have had to laboriously string together to bring their American protagonist into contact with the Afghan singer who will finally set the story in motion. But improbably, she attracts the interest of a very drunk bar patron, who happens to book USO acts, and before we know it, Richie and his untalented crooner are off to entertain the troops – in Afghanistan. There is no more mention of Ronnie. A huckster whose office is decorated with pictures of himself alongside famous musicians, Richie is presented as both a con-man without much in the way of ethics, and as a good guy who genuinely believes in making dreams come true. He then falls in with a few Yanks (Scott Caan and Danny McBride) exploiting the situation.
But sometimes abstraction is just a first-draft problem, and most of the actors here seem only confused by the script’s elisions, from Kate Hudson as a prostitute with her own trailer on an army base, and who looks to profit from Salima’s appearance on Afghan Star, to Bruce Willis as a military contractor of sorts who blackmails Richie in one scene before inexplicably serving as his bodyguard for the rest of the film. Rock the Kasbah puts that truism to the test, though, and comes dangerously close to proving it wrong. Certainly this is undercut within the film by Murray’s character pulling the strings and the film revolving around his decisions, not hers, but Lubany is still wonderful.
“Rock the Kasbah” wants to be a little serious and very amusing, but it doesn’t quite hit its mark in this regard.
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Nearly every character in the movie is, in fact, an accessory to Richie’s reawakening.
