Washed-up Los Angeles rock manager Richie Lanz accepts to fly to Kabul, Afghanistan with his only talent, singer Ronnie, who will perform at concerts for the US troops during the War in Afghanistan. However, once there, Ronnie steals Richie's passport and money and flees back to the US, leaving him stranded there. Since the US embassy needs two weeks to issue him a new passport, Richie accepts money from two arms dealers to smuggle ammunition to "good guys" in Paktia in several vehicles. Once there, Richie overhears a Pashtun girl, Salima, secretly singing American songs in a cave. She hides in his car and insists that he helps her perform on the Kabul TV show Aghan Star. She performs in the show, but since all the singers are men, and the Islamic fundamentalists threatens the staff, she is disqualified. However, Richie accepts to be Salima's manager, goes back to get her from Paktia, and allow her to continue singing on Afghan TV.
"Rock the Kasbah" is a confusing mess of a movie that doesn't know where its heading nor how to get there. The bizarre thing is that the 12-minute opening act is actually a good movie. It starts off with a funny sequence where a woman is singing terribly in the office of Richie, she stops, there's an awkward pause, until she says: "Mr. Lanz, I'm done", and then Bill Murray gives a typical Bill Murray response: "No, forgive me, no. You're just beginning". - "You liked it?" - "Liked it? You made me want to swallow poison." However, Richie then elaborates that Nicki Minaj and Christina Aguilera are "profoundly irritating" but huge stars, and that she is also that potentially successful "irritant", and accepts to represent her. There is also a sweet little moment when Richie talks with his daughter through the window and they have this exchange: "I love you." - "I love you more". Unfortunately, the story then switches to Afghanistan and that's when it stops being a good movie and becomes a weak one. It's not a good sign when the good first 12-minutes of a movie are followed by a terrible 90-minute main plot which feels like an intruder.
Richie is robbed and wanders aimlessly through Afghanistan, when the movie wastes time on pointless, unfunny episodes of some arms dealers, chaos and sectarian violence. Shockingly, the main plot finally sets in as late as 53 minutes (!) into the film, when Richie finds a Pashtun girl, Salima, singing American music in the cave. He becomes her manager, and this is where the story has some good intentions, saying something about women's rights in Muslim countries (Salima is the only woman allowed to appear on the TV show "Afghan Star", and is chastised for ostensibly defying the traditions of religion), finding talent where you least expected it and accepting this unusual talent, despite opposition. Sadly, the focus is all wrong. Salima should have been given a much larger role in the film. Who is she? What motivated her to sing? What does she want to achieve? Is she affraid of what the people will say? All these important details are ignored, as Salima has too little lines in the film, and thus too little character development. The interaction between Salima and Richie should have been the main focus of the story. Instead, the focus is all on Richie and his aimless wandering through Afghanistan. Even Kate Hudson's supporting character has more lines than Salima. The ending is sudden and feels incomplete. The director Barry Levinson actually directs all these scenes surprisingly well and competently, from setting up Afghan warlords, locations up to sharp cinematography, but it is remarkable that all this competence is wasted to present a lame, undeveloped story. Screenwriter Mitch Glazer wrote scripts for five Murray films ("Passion Play", "Mr. Mike's Mondo Video"), of which only "Scrooged" was somewhat good, though even it was heavy-handed at times. He should have just spun a story out of the first 12 minutes of the film, playing out in L.A., since it is the only segment that worked and felt genuine.
Grade:+
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