It wouldn’t surprise me if “Looking for Comedy in
the Muslim World” has left every theater in the L.A. area by
the time you finish reading this sentence.
Albert Brooks’ new comedy about a character named Albert
Brooks, who goes to India so the U.S. government can find out what
makes Muslims laugh, has been tanking.
Between Jan. 20, when the film was released in 161 theaters
nationwide, and the time of this writing, it has made a laughable
$813,996. The last movie Brooks was in, “Finding Nemo,”
made more than $300 million.
Granted, the two are entirely different films with entirely
different aims, but Brooks has been able to carry movies in the
past. The question then is why “Looking for Comedy” has
taken in less money than the opening weekend for
“Gigli.”
The short answer, it seems: “Looking for Comedy” may
be the least funny comedy since “Carpool.”
But is it?
I’ll admit, when I saw “Looking for Comedy,” I
laughed exactly twice, and one of those was during a preview for
Robin Williams’ new movie “R.V.”
The movie was boring, flat and looks like it was made on the
budget of a 10-year-old’s weekly allowance. At least twice I
saw a microphone boom clearly peeking down from the top of the
screen.
Still, the more I think about the movie after seeing it, the
more I like it. In the funniest scene of the movie, Brooks does a
stand-up show in Delhi, India. He performs satires of ventriloquism
and improvisation, and no one laughs, even though Brooks’
material is quite funny.
I can’t shake the feeling that the movie as a whole
relates to that one scene. Could it be possible that the film is
really a satire of a comedy in the same way Brooks’
performance on stage is really a satire of stand-up?
The film makes a point to explain that the performance bombed
because Brooks the character didn’t know his audience;
perhaps the film bombed because Brooks the writer/director
didn’t know his audience?
Seen through the most positive lens possible, “Looking for
Comedy” could be the best and most subtle Hollywood satire
ever made.
If the film falls out of theaters and makes less than $1
million, it would make it even better. Brooks could prove once and
for all that moviegoers don’t know anything about the
movies.
It would be remarkably easy to use CGI to remove the microphone
boom in a few shots, but Brooks left it in to call attention to the
film’s status as a film.
Just as the Indian audience stared blankly at the satire of
stand-up because it didn’t know what real stand-up was,
American audiences stare blankly at “Looking for
Comedy” because they don’t know what real moviemaking
is.
Of course, trying to wrap my head around such issues of
metacinema can only lead me to one question: Is Albert Brooks the
next Charlie Kaufman?
“Looking for Comedy” does look a bit like
“Adaptation.” In both cases, a writer wrote a script
that calls attention to its status as a script. Shakespeare used to
do the same thing, and, as does every artistic process, the idea
ultimately works its way back to the ancient Greeks.
So really, Brooks is attempting nothing new here, but as far as
I can tell, no one has written anything about the possibility that
the film is a satire of itself.
The satire is so successful (or unsuccessful, depending on how
you look at it) that it fools everyone and doesn’t seem like
a satire at all.
Instead, it seems like bad filmmaking, proving once again that
the line between brilliant and moronic is as fine as the wine Paul
Giamatti kept drinking in “Sideways.”
Ultimately, it’s impossible to tell which it is, which of
course is another sign of a good satire. I just wish more people
saw the movie, so I’d have more people to ask.
If you saw “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim
World,” e-mail your opinion to Tracer at
jtracer@media.ucla.edu.