Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World

Sheetal Sheth as Maya and Albert Brooks’ as himself in Brooks’
Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, a Warner Independent Pictures release.
Photo credit: Lacey Terrell © 2005 Shangri-La Entertainment, LLC.

Because I didn’t exactly hate “Finding Nemo,” despite its recycling of a plot that’s essentially kept Disney on life support since “Bambi,” and because I found the concept of “Defending Your Life” amusing (yes, I’m an atheist, but it’s a movie), I thought this movie could be funnier than hell. I was born in India, and I see a lot of potential in the question, “What makes Indians laugh?” However, I was greatly disappointed here.Albert Brooks is not a great comedian. The film is aware of it. The characters in the film are aware of it and I suspect the writer and director knew it too, but I can’t be sure. Cue rimshot.

The story goes something like this: Albert Brooks, playing himself, is recruited by the government to find out what tickles the funny-bones of Muslims. The film begins, though, with him auditioning for a part in a Penny Marshall film. Marshall, her casting agent and a representative from the studio have a meeting with Brooks.

They decide rather quickly that they’ve seen enough from a copy of “The In-Laws,” a bad remake of the 1979 original. I guess the joke is supposed to be that they’re casting for what’s surely to be another unnecessary, bad remake of a better original. Of Brooks’ performance in “The In-Laws,” Roger Ebert wrote, “Albert Brooks is portrayed as neurotic and fearful by nature, and so his reactions are not so much inspired by the pickle he’s in as by the way way he always reacts to everything.” I guess the joke’s on Brooks… or those of us who stayed through this entire movie.

I had to stay, because once I knew where this was going, in a bad direction indeed, I wanted to be sure that when I eviscerated it in print that I’d have a good defense for my hatred of this film, and not just my personal bias because of the fact that I was born in the country this movie takes place in. Well, I was wise to stay, because there’s so much more I know about why this is such an egregious waste of celluloid.

So, Brooks returns home after the audition. His daughter’s watching Powerpuff Girls. His wife (Amy Ryan) has a pathological addiction to Ebay. That’s about all we know of them. Why, therefore, they were even introduced is beyond me.

A letter from the State Department is waiting for him. As I indicated earlier, it’s an invitation to conduct a study of what makes Muslims laugh. The letter is signed by Senator and former actor Fred D. Thompson. When Brooks goes to Washington to meet with the Senator and his committee, the actor you see on screen actually is — ta-da — Fred Thompson. Brooks asks, “Didn’t you return to acting?” This was actually the funniest… no, the funny line in the entire movie.

The comedian wants to know why they picked him. So do I. Thompson quickly serves the right answer, with his trademark authoritative “bearer of bad news” delivery, “Quite frankly, our first choices were working.” This was the other funny line in the movie.

Brooks will be required to write a five-hundred page report on his findings. “You can include a lot of charts,” Thompson advises. The idea here, conveyed in agonizingly-unfunny expositionary dialogue, is that they can’t justify the expenditure for most of their government projects with smaller reports. Believe me, as unwieldy as my explanation was, it’s the Cliff’s Notes version of what was in the script.

The plan is to send him to India. The senator rationalizes it’s because there are 150 million Muslims living there and obtaining visas is easier. I imagine it’s because the Pakistani government read the script to this movie and refused to let such an atrociously-insulting portrait of Muslims be made inside their borders. India being comprised of a Hindu majority probably let it squeak by a narrow margin with considerable protest from the minority.

There’s no pay involved in the job, but he’ll get an office, assistant and the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts once the project is completed. While we’re supposed to laugh as Brooks does the “Oh, you mean the round one..” bit, I was mentally inserting cuts to scenes of George Bush handing out awards and commendations to only the most incompetent in his administration. Had the film used that actual footage, and intercut it with scenes of the consequences of their abject incompetence, it could have been hilarious. But no, suddenly I’m back to the reality of this movie.

Ok, I admit, there’s something inherently funny about the scene in which Brooks is aboard an Air India flight, but I don’t know that many Americans will particularly get it. And the Indians in the audience might identify with the crowded-bus feeling of coach class on Air India flights to New Delhi, only to be disgusted by the stereotypes that Brooks recycles and abuses for the next hour or so.

For an out-of-work actor, Brooks (the character) is quite demanding. Where’s his limo, his entourage, and why is his office sharing space with an outsourced call center? He checks in with his staff of two a the Hyatt New Delhi, and soon begins interviewing for a research assistant. This is where the film goes further downhill, rapidly. I can believe that some of the older applicants don’t understand computers, or don’t know how to type, or might have a language barrier because they weren’t fortunate enough to receive an education, but I have a really hard time believing that the young and outgoing Maya (Sheetal Sheth) doesn’t immediately recognize sarcasm in English. Her character’s guileless ineptitude is largely an insult to young adults — especially in today’s India.

The sheer incompetence of this movie is that, while English is a second national language to India, and clearly many of the movie’s characters are fluent in speaking English, these characters are potrayed as if India is some alien civilization that completely lacks a concept of sarcasm, or of other aspects of humor. Piss off any cabbie or street merchant in New Delhi, Lahore, Lucknow, Srinagar, Mumbai, Chenna, and you’ll quickly find they understand the art of sarcasm better than you do, and probably in three languages. Cabbies and street merchants are the same no matter where you are.

It’s not that humor doesn’t translate well from Hindi to English or vice-versa, as a matter of fact there are many Indians who mishmash the two languages interchangeably. They often think in both English and Hindi, depending on which language expresses what they’re thinking best. But knowing that, and even finding a way to exploit the inherent humor in it (see Mira Nair’s “Monsoon Wedding” or Gurinder Chadha’s “Bend it Like Beckham”), would actually require researching the subject you’re going to film… which might require making a real documentary, instead of fabricating a crappy, fictional one.

That raises another question: Why didn’t they just make a real documentary? They went to enough trouble to bother Penny Marshall and Fred Thompson play themselves. Wouldn’t it have simply been better to have Albert Brooks go there and do it for real? Then again, I’m thinking that might be a bad idea. Brooks might actually put himself in harms way, which is something real film makers do.

I don’t find it offensive to make fun of Indians. I make fun of my own culture all the time. But to do it successfully requires knowing your audience. How odd that Brooks quotes this famous line from Lenny Bruce, and yet doesn’t seem to apply its wisdom. “The Simpsons” Apu is, for example, humorous on so many dimensions. The joke isn’t so much that he’s a convenience store clerk, but in the idiosyncrasies of his character that are apparently rather well researched. Americans laugh with Apu, as do Indians, because there are a couple levels of cross-cultural and culturally-specific attributes to his character that make us all identify with him.

What I find abrasive and disgusting about this film is the willful ignorance and naivete with which it approaches its subject and the rote assumptions it casts upon it. If they had made a real documentary, Brooks and company would have found out the answer to their question, and would have encountered so many funny character types along the way. No, I’m not asking for a “feel-good” film that takes an ignorant westerner and enlightens him in a warm and fuzzy way to respect Indians. I would settle for a mildly-funny but charming movie like “American Chai” (also starring Sheetal Sheth), in which the director makes it possible for Americans to see the potential humor in Indian family situations and intraculturally-recognized cliches — the formula of Bollywood films, for example.

A writer like Brooks would observe the Bollywood film as perhaps indicative that Indians prefer a lower-brow level of film. What he would completely and utterly fail to recognize is that the popularity of the Bollywood formula is not appreciated by all Indians, just as the popularity of the Hollywood formula is not loved by all Americans… but in both cases, it’s apparent why the crap floats to the top. It’s not because India doesn’t understand humor the way Brooks does(n’t).

There’s a tacked-on subplot involving the Indian and Pakistani governments tracking Brooks’ movements, each suspicious that the other nation is up to something. By the end of the film, we find this really went nowhere, and was used merely as fodder for transitions to shoehorn a narrative into what would have worked better as a real documentary with only human study and no plot machinations woven into it. It’s as if the studio insisted they do this because they believe Americans cannot possibly be intrigued by an anthropological survey of another culture

There’s a moment in this digression in which Brooks is performing before a small band of aspiring Pakistani comics, stoned out of their gourds in the middle of nowhere. That they’re getting high on a hookah is the only reason they find him funny (a suggestion, perhaps, for the audience of this film).

One of the characters in the group reminded me of comedian Dave Attell, who once said people think he looks like a terrorist (His nickname at the airport is “Random Bag Check”… incidentally, so is mine.). It’s a really a bad sign when a comedian’s bombing so terribly with his own material, you have to be reminded of another comedian to find any humor in the situation.

The irony is that Brooks’ mission for the government is to help strengthen relations with the post-9/11 Muslim world. This film is so unimaginatively abhorrent, it would be surprising if it didn’t bomb Muslim-American relations back to the stone age. But Indians, Pakistanis, Muslims, Hindus, as a people aren’t so stupid as to believe that a film allegedly about their culture represents the collective opinion of all Americans toward them. Only individuals like Brooks would believe such a thing.

Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 • Running Time: 98 minutes • MPAA Rating: PG-13 for drug content and brief strong language. • Distributed by Warner Independent Pictures.

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