Film Review: Looking For Comedy in the Muslim World
By Rachel Astarte Piccione

It seems filmmaker Albert Brooks is incapable of serving up the kind of films that reflect the comedic status quo. He’s always shaking things up. He has an uncanny ability to make us laugh by showing us a side of life we may not have considered before. “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” is no exception.

In the film, Albert Brooks (who plays himself) is sent by the U. S. Government to India and Pakistan to find out what makes the over 300 million Muslims in the region laugh. Brooks is hesitant at first, and then becomes positively apoplectic when he learns he has to produce a 500-page report at the end of the journey! But, the promise of a Medal of Freedom gives Brooks the courage to take the challenge. Accompanied by two government agents (played by Jon Tenney and John Carrol Lynch), Brooks sets off to Delhi, hires an eager assistant (Sheetal Sheth), and begins his research. When man-on-the-street interviews don’t give him what he’s looking for, and he discovers that there are no comedy clubs in India or Pakistan, Brooks decides to perform his own stand-up show. In it, he’ll try all sorts of material, and based on what the audience laughs at, he’ll have all the information he needs for the government assignment.

Unfortunately, things don’t go as smoothly as planned, but Brooks continues his investigation, which includes a suspenseful journey across the Pakistan border to meet with a group of Pakistani comedians and an awkward business meeting with Al Jezeera.

The premise of this film is so magnificently far-fetched that you want it to be brilliant. You want Albert Brooks to emerge as an ambassador of peace, spreading his message through the ultimately universal language of comedy. While the film may not be brilliant, it is very good. If there is one disappointment, it is that its main subplot is predictable, and seems unworthy of the scope of the film: The Middle Eastern boyfriend of Brook’s assistant Maya becomes jealous of the time Brooks and Maya are spending together, which results in a lot of brooding and sulking and miscommunication. It’s a minor issue, however, given the admirable accomplishments of the rest of the film.

While in India, for example, Brooks wanted to film in one of the biggest mosques, for which he needed permission from the Imam. “I’m a Jewish man and I don’t think there’s been fifteen Jewish people in that mosque ever,” says Brooks. “And I’m just having a private discussion with [the Imam] and telling him I’m doing a movie about a character who has come to this part of the world to find out what makes people laugh. And he started to laugh. And then he said, ‘Okay’.”

Such is the power of comedy. Ultimately, that is Brooks’ message: If there is one thing common among people of all nations, it’s humor. “When the world changed [on September 11, 2001], eliciting laughter with subjects that were funny to me before 9/11 just didn’t seem good enough,” Brooks says. That was the reason he made this film. And in the end, “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” wins us over because Albert Brooks does, in fact, emerge as that ambassador of peace –- both in the film and in real life.