Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
Written and Directed by: Albert Brooks
Starring: Albert Brooks, Sheetal Sheth, Jon Tenney, John Carroll Lynch
Rated: PG-13 for drug content and brief strong language.
Parental Notes: This film will go straight over all but the most politically astute teens’ heads. It’s not inappropriate for younger kids – there’s almost no violence and only a little drug and language content – but youngsters probably just won’t find it interesting.
Explaining a joke, the saying goes, is like dissecting a frog: nobody laughs, and the frog dies. Albert Brooks’ new film “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” examines the idea of comedy from many angles but never falls into the trap of explaining itself. It’s a film about what makes us laugh, about how pointless it is to try and explain humor, about how individual humor is, and about the absurdity of the way that governments interact.
Brooks plays a character named Albert Brooks in the film, a sort of spoiled, whiny everyman. Albert’s career is on the rocks, so when he is summoned to a State Department meeting, he goes. He has nothing better to do, after all. It turns out that a secret commission headed by Fred Dalton Thompson (formerly senator from Tennesee, now an actor, and here playing himself), whose goal is to help America better understand the Muslim world. They wants Albert to spend a month in India and Pakistan and write 500 pages about what makes Muslims laugh. In return, he will get a Medal of Freedom (“The nice one,” one of the officials tells him).
Albert takes the gig, and soon finds himself in a tiny office in New Delhi rented for him by his two State Department liaisons, Stuart (John Carroll Lynch) and Mark (Jon Tenney). Nothing is quite as good as Albert would like, from the lack of a welcoming committee at the airport to the people who apply to be his assistant. He finds the one applicant who speaks English, can type and take shorthand, and doesn’t mind that he’s Jewish, Maya (Sheetal Sheth), and hires her on the spot.
The two of them take to the streets, stopping random people and asking them what makes them laugh. When this works about as well as one might expect, Albert decides to do a comedy concert in New Delhi. He figures that what the audience laughs at will tell him a lot about the Muslim sense of humor. Not a bad idea, but none of his jokes actually work. Not only are they mostly satires on things that don’t really exist in India, he tells them as if they’re not at all funny. Then, to complicate matters, he makes an illegal border crossing to visit some aspiring comedians in Pakistan and attracts the suspicious attention of the Pakistani and Indian governments.
Brooks is not a comedian who goes for the easy laugh. There are a handful of jokes in the film which made me laugh out loud, but most of the humor makes you grin rather than guffaw. It’s subtle. Just about every joke in the film is set up and told as if it’s not a joke at all. It’s a strange way to make a comedy, and makes the audience a trifle uncomfortable at times, but that’s probably what Brooks was going for.
“Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” is not an easy film to recommend that people see because not only is the subject matter problematic but the style of humor is so unusual that not everyone will enjoy it. And really, that’s the point: Albert’s task is impossible because everyone’s sense of humor is different. “What makes Muslims laugh” doesn’t exist any more than “what makes Americans laugh.” What makes a person laugh has to do with a lot more than religion or heritage. The best joke in the film is that at the end of the film, only the audience understands that.
–30–
Many things could be said about this movie. Funny and subtle are not not two of them. It is a sad disappointment which even at the best of times fails to live up to the potential of its premise. Brooks’ effort will soon be relegated to the dustbin of wasted celluloid time.
Whatever Brooks was trying to do, it falls utterly flat, just like the jokes in the stand-up comedy scene. I found myself muttering: who the hell is the director? kick his ass! where is that director! Later I realized that Brooks was his own director, and was kind indeed to his protagonist … Brooks. When the movie ends, the audience, contrary to your suggestion,only heaves a sigh of relief.
I’m intrigued by your reaction to the film – the jokes in the stand-up comedy scene were supposed to fall flat; that was the joke of the scene (particularly the bit where he takes the audience’s suggestions). I suppose it’d be more accurate to describe the film as metacomedy – it isn’t funny in a normal way, which is what I was trying to communicate by saying it was subtle.
I saw this film a few weeks ago, and aside from certain bits of humor (the call-centers in India), I didn’t get this film. Maybe Brooks’ style of comedy just rang hollow with me. Maybe it’s because having been in India, and been in that environment, I can see the film from both sides of east and west.
densaer