‘Rock the Kasbah’ doesn’t rock

Two things. One, Bill Murray doesn’t do many movies where he is the main character. Once in a while, Bill Murray will do a gem like St. Vincent. It’s rare. Most of the time, if he’s the main character, that character is boorish and boring.

Rock the Kasbah falls in the boorish-boring category.

Bill Murray is a washed-up music promoter pretending to be more than he really is. Desperate for cash, he convinces his secretary and only talented act that she ought to go to Kabul, Afghanistan, to do USO shows. Once there, she panics, runs away and leaves him high and dry.

While wallowing in self-pity and classic Murray self-promotion, the guy finds a major singing talent in a young woman. But Pashtun women in Afghanistan are forbidden to sing. He convinces her to try out for Afghanistan’s version of American Idol.

Complications follow.

To give Murray some credit, he and director Barry Levinson (Rain Man) work overtime to make Mitch Glazer’s awful script funny. It just isn’t. But that’s not surprising. I am probably in the minority, but Murray just isn’t funny, and outside of a rare movie, never has been.

This story was originally published October 22, 2015 at 6:00 AM with the headline "‘Rock the Kasbah’ doesn’t rock."