Review Roundup: Bill Murray, Zooey Deschanel & Bruce Willis Star in ROCK THE KASBAH

Directed by Oscar winner Barry Levinson, ROCK THE KASBAH is a new dramatic comedy inspired by stranger-than-fiction, real-life events.

Richie Lanz, dumped and stranded in war-torn Kabul by his last remaining client, discovers Salima Khan, a Pashtun teenager with a beautiful voice and the courageous dream of becoming the first woman to compete on national television in Afghanistan's version of "American Idol." Richie partners with a savvy hooker, a pair of hard-partying war profiteers and a hair-trigger mercenary and, braving dangerous cultural prejudices, manages his new protégée into becoming the "Afghan Star."

ROCK THE KASBAH stars Bill Murray (ST. VINCENT), Zooey Deschanel (NEW GIRL), Bruce Willis (Broadway's MISERY), Kate Hudson (SOMETHING BORROWED), Danny McBride (THIS IS THE END), and Scott Caan (HAWAII FIVE-0).

Let's see what the critics had to say!

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: Clichéd, enervating, insulting - it's tough to settle on a single pejorative for "Rock the Kasbah," though abysmal might do. Crammed with performers who apparently didn't read the script before signing on, the movie offends your intelligence on every level, starting with its use of Afghanistan as a Western playground. And it does so while trying to pump laughs from the threat of beheadings and honor killings alongside crude yuks about bedding Danielle Steel - questionable fodder made worse partly by some colossal bad timing: President Obama recently announced that American troops would remain, through 2017, in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has made a comeback and the so-called Islamic State is on the rise.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Rock the Kasbah goes fierce to quietly touching and back to funny again. Bruce Willis shows up as a gun-toting mercenary. And there's Kate Hudson as a hooker working the Kabul circuit. And how about Leem Lubany as a Pashtun teen girl tied to strict Muslim rules of conduct. When Richie books her on Afghan Star, a version of American Idol, there are death threats. Some of this really happened. But don't get bogged down in details. Just roll with Murray, an actor so damn good you'll follow him anywhere.

Andrew Barker, Variety: Mere weeks after the horrific bombing of an Afghan hospital and President Obama's announcement of extended U.S. military presence in the region, this weekend might not prove to have been an ideal moment to release a film that treats the slow-motion tragedy of Afghanistan's recent history as an exotic backdrop for broad fish-out-of-water comedy. Then again, there will probably never be a good time to release a project as fundamentally misjudged and disjointed as "Rock the Kasbah." Extremely loosely inspired by the true story of Setara Hussainzada, an Afghan woman who braved death threats after appearing on the country's version of "American Idol," this Bill Murray starrer utterly fails to connect as an "Ishtar"-esque Muslim-world farce, a cynical skewering of American foreign policy, or a cuddly, inspirational ode to the unifying power of music - and to the film's dubious credit, it does attempt all three. Commercial prospects do not look kosher.

Michael O'Sullivan, The Washington Post: Sexist, racist, overlong, dull, visually ugly and, worst of all, unfunny, "Kasbah" squanders its cast, headlined by Bill Murray as a dissolute American rock promoter stuck in Afghanistan, and featuring Zooey Deschanel, Bruce Willis, Kate Hudson, Danny McBride and Scott Caan in unmemorable supporting roles. It takes some strenuous effort to extinguish that much party-hearty talent, but the script is like a blast of fire retardant. All that's left at the end of this flame-out of a movie is a heap of smoldering ash.

Jordan Hoffman, The Guardian: There's a special variety of infuriating that comes from a bad movie by talented people. Barry Levinson has some outstanding films under his belt: Diner, Bugsy,Wag the Dog. His 1990 family epic Avalon is a masterpiece, and the finest film made about 20th century immigrants and their assimilation into American culture. Rock the Kasbah is so unworthy of him, I'm surprised he didn't find a way to get his name off it. Murray is just following orders, but here he's far more antic and grating than usual. I can see a pitch meeting in which "then Bill Murray sings Smoke on the Water to a group of baffled villagers" sounds like it might work, but the execution here is just awful.

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: Bill Murray riffing on his wisecracking misanthrope-concealing-his-heart-of-gold persona is pretty much all there is to Barry Levinson's "Rock the Kasbah,' a slapdash, sporadically funny cross between the infamous "Ishtar' and the mercifully forgotten "American Dreamz.'

Susan Wloszczyna, RogerEbert.com: Add rather startling explosions and bloodshed to this tonal discord, and you have a movie with one too many agendas-especially considering it is inspired by a real-life female singer who broke the gender barrier on the actual "Afghan Star." A veteran director like Barry Levinson of "Good Morning, Vietnam" and "Rain Man" fame and a screenwriter like Mitch Glazer, a one-time Rolling Stone reporter who contributed to Murray's "Scrooged," should have done a better job at weaving all these shaggy strands together considering it took "Rock the Kasbah" seven years to get off the ground.

Leah Gleenblatt, Entertainment Weekly: The movie itself is slight and sometimes outright offensive, though it's also intermittently amusing and not entirely unself-aware. The best bits hang mostly on Murray, whose gonzo charm is enough to keep Rock from sinking under the weight of its own silliness.

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: The gaps between the hipster comedy of the star, the incipient sentimentality of the story and the gravely depressing reality of the setting provide tonal abysses simply too vast to bridge in Rock the Kasbah, an intermittently amusing but dramatically problematic mish-mash that careens all over a rough and rocky road. The idea of parachuting Bill Murray as a washed-up '60s rock tour manager into the nightmare of contemporary Afghanistan no doubt seemed like too promising a fish-out-of-water story not to pursue. But so much of what goes down, particularly as concerns the modest but insistent hopefulness of the third act, feels like an overly idealistic wish-fulfillment fantasy and fails to unite the film's assorted creative aspirations. This Open Road release doesn't look to travel very far theatrically.

Josh Lasser, IGN: The abrupt shift in Rock the Kasbah and the film's need to redeem its main character, particularly in such grand fashion, is a stumbling block which it simply cannot overcome. Watching the snarky, rude, over the hill rock manager muddle through life and just keep on chugging for 100 minutes may not make for the greatest character arc, but it could have stopped Rock the Kasbah from the questionable changes it undergoes. It still might have a chance after the shift in stories, but the movie never gives Lubany enough space to create as fully realized a character as it ought, and as the new tale requires.

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