Fantastic!

An Exercise In Nonsense

A Major Disappointment

It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

Just caught this on HBO several years after its release. Albert Brooks goes to India (?) to find out what makes Muslims laugh, but bombs terribly. Could be funny but watching Brooks actually bomb was painful. I had to mute some parts because I was embarrassed for him.Brooks' confused, why-is-this-happening-to-me, persona is intact, but the vehicle is too awkward, the script and approach uneven. I would almost have preferred something over-the-top than this too-close-to-reality handling.Oh good lord. I have to have 10 lines for this review to meet IMDb requirements so you can stop reading. I'm just typing lines to meet length their requirements.I wonder if I do this If it will fulfill their arbitrary guidelines

Other reviewers have got it wrong. This isn't dry intellectual humor that'll have you laughing hours later after you think about the line. This is vapid and uninspired humor that was horribly executed and horribly shot.The camera angles are uninspired, the music is canned, the acting and overall film are simply poorly directed. Lots of master shots, few if any cutaways. There is absolutely nothing here to accentuate the humor in the film. It's bland as can be.The one scene that had some humor in it was left on the cutting room floor, and the other comedic sequence cast some aspirations on international rivals.The real crux of the matter is that the film presupposes that somehow humor is not universal. It also demonstrates a kind of intellectual high-brow naiveté about the middle east. Ironically enough the film was allegedly aimed at a western audience and trying to bridge social divides, but falls miserably flat on its face through lack of zest.The other aspect is that this is, more likely, a test market film that needed to recoup its losses. It was shot with a minimal budget, and had production values to match. What was being tested here (the director? the viability of shooting a low budget film in India?) I have no idea, but it's market appeal has all the earmarks of a film that is ready to have its return and market analysis fast tracked to the studio heads and marketing department.Why on earth there would be more than 100 reviews for this film is beyond me. What's even more puzzling is why there would be praises heaped onto this thing when it was intentionally half baked.Did I mention the ending? Well, I can't, but it's not funny, just like the rest of the film.

Albert Brooks' comedy has always been too dry for my taste, but his latest directorial venture is absolutely pathetic. This movie is supposed to be a comedy, but it barely makes you laugh. Maya and the embassy officials are painfully unfunny, even to the extent of taking away some of the fun.It is almost a cliché that Brooks, as an American, has to explain nuances of the English language to the Indian Maya. Perhaps Brooks needs to be reminded that "Indian" English is more authentically English than the Americanized version. The concept of interviewing the Indian candidates near the beginning of the movie must have seemed funny on paper, but the end result was cringingly boring. How can you mess up such a perfect opportunity for laugh-out-loud comedy? His stand-up routines in the movie are not for the common man in the US, let alone Indians in New Delhi. The whole concept of "what makes you laugh" does not yield any comedy whatsoever. The sojourn to Pakistan wasn't even interesting. The Pakistani laughing jacks seemed more like drunk jokers than "aspiring comedians." The whole movie was so focused on Brooks that it seemed more like an attempt at self-promotion rather than entertainment.This movie is for you only if you want to bore yourself for 98 min, or if you're a Brooks fan-boy.

How come you show a non Muslim country in the movie named "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World" Its completely wrong, I have watched this movie I did not find any fun part related to Muslims, It would have been much better if they shot this movie in Pakistan or Indonesia if they were in search of true Muslim world comedy. For instance in Pakistan there are comedy stage shows more popular than English and Indian movies...Its slightly biased view that Muslim world doesn't have comedy or they don't like fun, they do and probably same as any other religion. The only problem is that their comedy is hijacked by few fanatical extremists and media around the world prefer to show what we want to see,, terrorism, killing, nukes, wars.. all related to Muslim unfortunately in current era.however I like the acting and direction