| Overall Grade: |
C |
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| Story: |
C |
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| Acting: |
C+ |
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| Direction: |
C+ |
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| Visuals: |
C |
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"Looking for Comedy" Stumbles Out of Gate
by Thomas (movies profile)
May 10, 2008
12
of
13 people found this review helpful
I've always been an admirer of Albert Brooks' films from "Lost in America" to "Mother" to "The Muse." He's consistently been L.A.'s answer to Woody Allen and like Allen did before "Match Point," with "Melinda and Melinda," Brooks stumbles with this new film, "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," but it's not bad enough that he won't be able to (hopefully) pick himself up with his next film.
In "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," Brooks manages to get a wonderful supporting performance from Sheetal Sheth as his assistant but can't seem to get his own performance on par with those from his past films. He's essentially playing himself this time out as opposed to the characters he played in his other pictures and that poses a major problem as too many scenes involve Brooks' reputation in Hollywood (which is both hot and cold) and not all of those scenes work the way they are intended to.
The film opens with Brooks meeting with Penny Marshall to star in her remake of "Harvey." After Marshall refuses to hire him for the part, Brooks returns home to his wife and daughter only to have a letter waiting for him. The letter states that he has been selected to go to India and Pakistan to find out what makes Muslims laugh. He meets up with the head of the mission, Fred Dalton Thompson, who explains his assignment which is to write a 500-page paper after doing the requisite research. Brooks agrees to go on the journey and is assigned two cohorts--Stuart (John Carroll Lynch) and Mark (Jon Tenney).
Enter India where Brooks is assigned his new office. In a hilarious scene, Brooks interviews prospective applicants for the job of his assistant and eventually he selects the charming and sweet Maya (Sheetal Sheth). But, even after interviewing dozens of people to find out what makes them laugh, they can't seem to get more than one or two pages of material for the report. They invite many different types of people to attend a comedy performance Brooks is slated to put on to see what makes the Muslims laugh.
At the performance Brooks puts on, he falls flat as far as getting laughs from the crowd is concerned--even with the help of a cute dummy named Danny. At the point after the performance, the film runs out of steam entirely and runs a boring course in which Brooks sneaks into Pakistan and meets with other prospective comedians and so on until the film reaches a disappointing conclusion.
That said, Brooks does have his moments as a performer in the movie especially whenever he mentions the fact that he played a fish in "Finding Nemo," as if that means something to the Muslim World and in fact to some it does mean something as in one scene, he is selected to be on a TV sitcom in the Muslim World because the producers believe he is in town playing a fish. But, his performance grows tiresome in the later scenes and he is outshined by the wonderful Sheth who makes this performance stand out.
What "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World" needed was a script revision in which the last half hour was completely reworked and fleshed out with more substance and also for Brooks to play a character other than himself even if that meant cutting the "Finding Nemo" references. Then, we may have had something interesting and a film with a point. As is, the movie makes no really compelling statements about the Muslim World and only provides the terrific Sheth's performance and a few scattered laughs as reasons to see it. |
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