Rock the Kasbah - D+

Rated R, 100 minutes

Recent Emmy-winner Bill Murray is one of my favorite actors and comedians, but his new comedy falls flat. The pleasant but messy, wildly uneven new comedy "Rock the Kasbah," in spite of its charming star and a great cast, hits many sour notes. Murray is Richie Vance a has-been rock manager who takes his last remaining client on a USO tour of Afghanistan. When Richie finds himself in Kabul, abandoned, penniless and without his passport, he discovers a young girl with an extraordinary voice and manages her through Afghanistan's version of "American Idol," the wildly popular "Afghan Star." Directed by Oscar-winner Barry Levinson ("Rainman") and written by Mitch Glazer ("The Recruit"), "Rock the Kasbah" is a rather meaningless title for a sloppy, meandering movie that doesn't rock anything and is scattershot funny only due to the charms of Murray, who does his best to make the thing work as the out-of-place talent agent full of wild claims such as having discovered Madonna. I've heard that little good comes out of Afghanistan, and that would be true when concerned with this movie, which doesn't even get to its talent show premise until well into the second act; very loosely inspired by the courageous true story of Setara Hussainzada (for whom the film is dedicated to), the first woman to really sing and dance on the real "Afghan Star" TV show, "Rock the Kasbah" is far less engaging than Hussainzada's story, far from funny, and wastes a bunch of talented actors in a very, very thin movie that has a wisecracking Murray traipsing across the desert and getting shot for little reason at all. Zooey Deschanel, Bruce Willis, Kate Hudson, Scott Caan, Danny McBride and Taylor Kinney all appear, mostly in roles (especially Hudson's) that are contrivances, while the lovely Leem Lubany, as the young Afghan woman with a pretty voice, is given little to do. The uneven last act, a messy mix of bullets and maudlin inspiration, especially rings false seeming like a different movie altogether, and I'd say that "Rock the Kasbah" would go down as one of acclaimed director Levinson's worst films. Unless you really, really enjoy Murray, I wouldn't bother with this and instead watch the excellent 2009 documentary on Hussainzada's story, aptly called "Afghan Star."