Movie Review: Rock the Kasbah
By Thalia Badio, Contributor
[Open Roads Films; 2015]
Rating: 0.5/5
Everyone involved in this movie should be ashamed of themselves.
I’m talking to the cast, the producers, the editors, the director, the music coordinator, the guy that brought them all coffee in the morning. Everyone should be ashamed.
I don’t know what disappointed me the most in this blatant disrespect of cinema. Was it the concept, the story itself? From what I could surmise, Rock the Kasbah is some perverse Disney Channel original movie about a girl who overcomes her country's sexist traditions and beliefs through a love of western American music and the guidance of a drunk, clinically depressed Bill Murray.
In order to indulge such a ridiculous and unrealistic idea, of course Rock the Kasbah is filled with gaping and unanswered plot holes; at a certain point, everything is both so irrelevant and unnecessary that every aspect of the movie becomes useless. About 20 minutes in, it became clear the trainwreck that is Rock the Kasbah could not be saved.
Clearly, director Barry Levinson was aware of just how awful this script and film was going to be and did his best to cover the mistakes with unessacary cameos and apperances from actors such as Kate Hudson and Bruce Willis. I imagine what he wasn’t expecting was the pathetic turnout for his negatively received and poorly publicized film. This movie has absolutely bombed at the box office, something a reckless $15 million budget should have been prepared for.
Clearly an effort went toward countering Murray’s lifeless performance with lively and inappropriate music; I distinctly remembered hearing Shakira’s early 2000 classic, “Wherever Whenever.” What is was doing in the middle of a movie involving Afghanistan? I’ll never know.
A final shout out to the girl who left the theater 20 minutes in; my prayers were with you. To those remaining in the theater, I can only apologize that you were forced to see such a pathetic and disrespectful embarrassment to the movie industry.
