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Film review

Looking for comedy in Brooks' film

As Albert Brooks tries to create world peace by studying what makes Muslims laugh, he neglects to humor his audience.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published February 9, 2006

What a great premise Albert Brooks concocted for his movie Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, and what lengths he goes to to mishandle it. An idea this intriguing deserves to be real, and it isn't coincidence that Brooks' movie works best when it feels like a cockeyed documentary.

The concept is that the U.S. government decides that the best way to understand the Muslim culture it is disrupting with war is to discover what makes it laugh. Fred Dalton Thompson plays himself delivering the pitch, a former senator turned actor who can't entirely quit the politics game. It sounds just reasonable enough to be worth a try.

Brooks casts himself as the comedian chosen for a State Department mission to India and Pakistan to gather information for a 500-page report on the subject. The fact that India is primarily a Hindu culture is the sly way Brooks suggests that our government messes up even its best intentions. There are enough Muslims there to count, Thompson assures Brooks, who's too dazzled by the half-hearted promise of a Medal of Freedom to argue.

Brooks is flown to New Delhi to begin research with limited funds and fewer ideas on how to do it. Interviewing strangers on the street doesn't prove much except that Polish jokes work anywhere. He's joined by a pair of disinterested government agents (Jon Tenney, John Carroll Lynch) who should be written funnier, and a local woman named Maya (Sheetal Sheth) who can type 125 words per minute but, like everyone else there, doesn't understand Brooks' humor.

The problem is that Brooks' jokes wouldn't play well in New York or Peoria, either. His punch lines are the blank looks on Indian faces, a gag getting old by the time Brooks organizes a stand-up comedy concert, performing bits he used 30 years ago as a rising comedian. The audience doesn't laugh, and neither do we.

Looking for an ending to his movie about the Muslim world, Brooks detours to Pakistan, where he's smuggled across the border like a spy. Any remnants of authenticity created by the film's brilliant set-up are erased, replaced by mistaken identity ploys and the silly notion that Brooks may start World War III. The film doesn't end as much as run out of steam, and Brooks doesn't even draw much of a conclusion about what he learned.

Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World mostly finds that particular commodity at home, in a hilarious opening scene when Brooks auditions for Penny Marshall's remake of Harvey and isn't "Jimmy Stewart" enough. The State Department meeting scene is written and performed cleverly enough to keep us wondering if this is for real. The New Delhi locales are fascinating, and the movie maintains respect for the culture; it is Brooks who looks foolish trying to fit in. There's a lesson there, somewhere he isn't willing to go.

Director: Albert Brooks

Cast: Albert Brooks, Sheetal Sheth, Jon Tenney, John Carroll Lynch, Fred Dalton Thompson, Amy Ryan, Penny Marshall

Screenplay: Albert Brooks

Rating: PG-13; profanity, brief drug references

Running time: 98 min.

[Last modified February 8, 2006, 09:04:06]