A failed look at 'Comedy in the Muslim World'

If you think you're going to learn something from Albert Brooks' ("Mother," "Taxi Driver") new film, "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," you've got another thing coming. This movie is a distinctly no-learning zone, despite a premise chock full of creativity and a trailer that seems to suggest the possibility of a hilarious quasi-documentary. \nInstead, this film is a straightforward and half-assed comedy with a couple funny moments, which are really neither about Muslims, nor about what makes them laugh. Writer-director-actor Brooks bypasses all of his co-stars and even the title of the film, turning the spotlight on himself. By the tacked-on and lame ending, I was looking for people in the theater who were still chuckling. \nThe set-up is intriguing and full of squandered potential: the U.S. government, in an attempt to understand the people of the world to a greater degree, has launched a project aimed at discovering what makes Muslims laugh. To spearhead the project, the government commissions comedian Albert Brooks to travel to India and Pakistan and write a 500-page report on Muslim humor. Brooks hires an intelligent Indian girl (Sheetal Sheth) to serve as his tour guide of the country. She turns out to be the only radiant part of an otherwise dreary experience, which in Brooks' world translates to: give her less screen time than she deserves.\nNaturally, there are many self-deprecating opportunities to show Brooks as a fish out of water and a man out of his element. There are plenty of jokes about the fact that he is Jewish, and there are plenty of jokes about how people don' t recognize him as a comedian. They get a little tiring five minutes after they begin. \nI should say something about the ending, without giving away too much: there really isn't an ending. I unwisely assumed from the title of the movie the goal was to find some semblance of comedy in the Muslim world. But that would be silly, I suppose; Brooks just wants to go looking for it, take us three-quarters of the way there, and then drop us off at the last moment. If I were a studio executive, I might suggest renaming the film "Still Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, Even When the Credits Begin Rolling."\nUltimately, Brooks' fatal sin of filmmaking isn't very hard to miss: He thinks his audience will find him more interesting than the Muslim people he uses as a backdrop. He is just sorely mistaken.