While visiting Kabul, Afghanistan, washed-up music manager Richie Lanz gets dumped by his last client. There Richie accidentally discovers a teenage girl with an extraordinary voice and takes her to Kabul to compete on the popular television show, Afghan Star.
It needs a smarter script. It needs at least two or three perfectly engineered, joke-after-joke sequences. It needs a smart director - did you really do "Wag the Dog," Levinson? - whose idea of political satire goes beyond freshman-year sarcasm.
Murray is entertaining but the plot seems entirely arbitrary with characters such as Kate Hudson's happy hooker Merci popping up without much rhyme or reason. A real disappointment.
As one-liner after one-liner misses its mark, you begin to feel sorry for Murray, who's really too old to be playing a guy who has a little daughter ... and likes to get kinky with Kate Hudson as a raucous, Dolly Parton-style hooker-businesswoman.
The biggest shock in a film that utilised every stereotype and cliché in the book is that The Clash's Rock The Kasbah doesn't feature. It could only have improved things.
An acclaimed film director, a legendary comic actor, lots of fun rock and pop songs, and a noble story at its core can't save "Rock the Kasbah" from being one hugely misguided dud.
