I love Bill Murray and would watch him in anything thus why I watched A Very Murray Christmas in spite of hating Miley Cyrus and not getting the fervor around Sofia Coppola’s films. He stars in Rock the Kasbah, which also evokes eighties music nostalgia for The Clash’s Rock the Casbah so the prospect of watching this film seems delightful. Unfortunately the reality is dreadful and beg you to heed my warning. It is not worth your time!
The one hour forty-six minute film starts in California and ends in Afghanistan. Murray plays Richie, an aging, has-been rock manager surviving on fumes as he embarks on a United Service Organizations tour to entertain the troops in Afghanistan. Shenanigans ensue when things do not go as planned, but he finds redemption in a natural talent whom he helps to compete in Afghan Star, which is the equivalent of American Idol. Rock the Kasbah is basically a wacky road trip movie in a war-ravaged land, which is not distasteful at all. The action ensues because of an incident that I never considered plausible. I can see someone stealing x, but not y. What would you do with y? If it is an act of revenge, they underwrote a character’s capacity for spite.
Rock the Kasbah is fueled by its star-studded cast as they pass the screen time like a track runner passing the baton in a variety of what are supposed to be amusing scenarios. I am not saying that I never laughed, but often or out loud? No. Bruce Willis plays a mercenary. Kate Hudson plays a sex worker, and I felt as if she could do better. Zooey Deschanel plays his last American client. Various Americans appear to party, rescue or endanger Murray’s character. Is anyone a really big Scott Caan fan? Are there a contingent of people who wistfully hope that he will get cast? Well, here you go.
Rock the Kasbah’s humor solely relies on the absurdity of a rock manager applying his limited schmoozing skills in a hostile environment and somehow surviving. Murray is charming and enraging as a man who acts as if he has options and traipsing along as if everything is going to work out when it really should not. I know that it is a movie, but he is put in the middle of some dangerous situations, and the strain on my suspension of disbelief was considerable. Yes, it is amusing, but sober, humorless me could not stop thinking that people are actually dying out there and in dire need of money, but he can float on the wings of fate flush and safe. Murray’s charms can only go so far.
I only watched the first two seasons of American Idol and vaguely recall that most of the finalists were good. Rock the Kasbah’s soundtrack should be memorable and motivate me to look for the soundtrack. The music was not good. Whenever the music is pivotal to the plot, and I complain about it, the film has failed! I watched a Polish horror musical, and it was amazing. It was the first musical out of Poland ever. What was this movie’s excuse? Shame! Do not interpret my comment as slander against Afghanistan music. I do not believe that this film captured the musical essence of the country. Anytime I have heard music from other countries, I have been moved. There is a reason that other cultures have more men dancing than ours. Give me the real deal!
Rock the Kasbah waits until the middle of the film to have Murray meet his muse! There was an afterthought subplot involving the singer’s father and treachery involving a local warlord, but a foreign country’s local political struggle, even with the potential for violence, is not fleshed out even if there is plenty of material to inspire. The singer’s story is severely curtailed, and I was surprised after watching the movie to discover that she is based on a real person!
Rock the Kasbah is a dramatization of a documentary called Afghan Star, which was the debut film of a woman director. That film followed four contestants and used the contest as a way to examine how a society openly reacquaints itself with music after the Taliban banned it! The singer was supposed to be modeled on one of those contestants. I have never seen this documentary, and I am uncertain whether or not it is available for viewing in the US, but how is it possible that filmmakers watched that documentary and thought, “If only there was randomly a fictional American character in it who would dominate the whole film to completely obscure the story of Afghanistan’s people, culture or politics while still being set in Afghanistan?” No one needed the movie that we got.
Rock the Kasbah should have centralized one of the woman singers instead of making her a late appearing, supporting character of color who exists solely to help a random American dude get a professional second act. It makes the movie about his talent, his adventure and his life. He empowers her. Her courage and artistry get attributed to him. He provides legitimacy to her music when in reality the writers must know that their protagonist was insufficient to just exist in his natural environment and make a feature length movie so they decided to put him in another setting to prop him up. The fact that they needed to invent someone to tell a story means that it is likely that they did not relate to anyone in the documentary.
Apparently the documentary tackled such issues as misogyny, repression, ethnic strife and finding joy after war, but Rock the Kasbah is almost devoid of such content except for some vague girl power and push against oppression. It is thin on substance because the filmmakers never understood the story that they were adapting. The real suffering worthy of time is an American man who is not as successful or special as he believes himself to be so he has to relocate to become so. It is The Heart of Darkness as comedy in today’s reality show culture. Anyone can be a star if you have demographic characteristics that usually symbolize power in a land where few possess those characteristics. It is post-modern colonialism, a culture vulture with a passport and a plane ticket.
Would I have felt that way if Rock the Kasbah spent more time working on a story that felt like more than The Hangover: Afghanistan war edition? Probably because I had the same complaints about The Sapphires, but did not learn my lesson and ignorantly watched a movie without being aware that it was actually based on real people. Note to self: if a movie is based on a real story about a woman of color, but a fictional character is introduced and centralized, don’t watch it. Even the power of Bill Murray cannot compel me, and I love him.
I am curious about how Afghans feel about Rock the Kasbah. The actor who plays the singer is actually Palestinian, which good for her for working. Other actors in Afghan roles were from Iran, Syria and other areas. There were a couple of Afghan actors who had immigrated from the region ages ago. It would have been a striking blow to the Taliban to spark a film culture in Afghanistan by encouraging the locals to act, to teach them the technical aspects of production, but the film was shot in Morocco for obvious reasons.