Rock The Kasbah tries many things without any sense of history, geography or, less ambitiously, irony. The furthest Rock The Kasbah gets towards stirring anything is Murray’s thinning hair.

Bruce Willis steals all his scenes and is fun to watch. But it ultimately goes everywhere and nowhere.

While the film’s basic premise is unusual and in parts interesting, it loses steam in the second half, with a fairly bland conclusion.

This film is confused about what it wants to be. It’s not entirely satire, not entirely dark comedy and utterly boring at every turn.

Depending heavily on cultural cliches and crisp one liners, this comedy drama written by Mitch Glazer is an easy watch. But the issue with the script is that it switches from an adventurous tone to a moralistic tale halfway through the narration. The change is sudden, unforeseen and completely derails the film from its original track and goal.

The story never rings true, the antics are jaded and the performances – more than just lackluster- especially from all those heavy-weight stalwarts in the picture. The one person who makes a difference is Leem Lubany, who is refreshingly alive and sparkling with talent in a performance that gives the discordant, juvenile and unbecoming narrative some much needed excitement. It’s quite a harried ride, this one!

The film’s biggest problem is not that it is offensive on many levels on multiple occasions, but that it is incredibly unfunny. None of Murray’s rock bottom ignominy is amusing at any instance. Most of his dialogue seems to have been improvised on set, because it’s so terrible you won’t believe a major studio would have gone through the script and confirmed it.

The film offers many openings, but fails to close them down, with a weak screenplay. The second half, however gathers pace, with a quick narrative filling the openings. The camerawork is steady, but offers no creative shots, with mid-range shots being used excessively. Murray brings to the fore his trademark wit in a few scenes, with the dialogues bringing out a few laughs in the second half.

Rock the Kasbah is neither about rock nor a casbah, and only Bill Murray, the craggy-faced prince of pathos, single-handedly steers the movie from one stupefying bad moment to the next.

Rock the Kasbah doesn’t really rock at all…