One presumes that veteran director Barry Levinson envisaged this Mitch Glazer-scripted comedy about a has-been rock promoter working his shtick in Kabul as Good Morning Afghanistan, although the phrase “Good Night, Vienna” better describes its reception in America, where it tanked spectacularly last year. No wonder: it’s a dog’s dinner of a movie which not even the usually reliable Bill Murray can raise above the level of confused, cliched claptrap. Murray plays Richie Lanz, who comes to Kabul on the promise of rich pickings, and winds up attempting to help Leem Lubany’s Pashtun prodigy Salima defy death threats by singing on national TV.
Kate Hudson plays a toe-curlingly generic hooker with a heart of gold, Scott Caan and Danny McBride are salesmen for weight-loss firm Herbalife turned wacky gun-runners, and Bruce Willis pouts like a man whose been instructed to spend the entire movie doing a bad impression of Bruce Willis. As for Zooey Deschanel, she jumps ship at the first opportunity, beaten to the punch only by Shia LaBeouf (originally earmarked for a supporting role) who baled out even before the cameras turned – presumably, he had actually read the script. The end credits dedicate the film to Setara Hussainzada, to whose real-life story (previously told in Havana Marking’s documentaries Afghan Star and Silencing the Song) this clunker does a dispiriting disservice.
