- Studio: Warner Independent Pictures (WIP)
- Release Date: Jan 20, 2006
- Critic Score
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91Like "The Aristocrats," Looking succeeds smashingly both as a comedy and as a savvy deconstruction of comedy.
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75I liked the movie. I smiled a lot. It maintained its tone in the face of bountiful temptations to get easy laughs.
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75It's a sly, low-key comedy in which he casts himself as a neurotic, self-absorbed curmudgeon.
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75Fans of Brooks and his wry, dry neuroticism will not be disappointed as he whines and whimpers around New Delhi.
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75A funny and appropriately skewed comedy.
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75Albert Brooks may have come up with the funniest movie premise of the year in Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World.
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75It would have better if Brooks had invested more time trying to discover what makes AMERICANS laugh.
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70Though it risks political incorrectness every step of the way, film is more a pleasant laugher than a sharp-edged satire.
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70The movie doesn't so much end as reach a stopping point and limp hurriedly off-screen, like a bad stand-up chased out by boo birds. But God, is it funny.
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70Brooks' film is especially welcome now because it frankly admits that most Americans are ignorant about Muslims and have a lot to learn, in contrast with the few other Hollywood movies dealing with Muslims -- "Syriana," "Munich" -- which seem to suggest that non-Muslim viewers can emerge knowing the score.
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67It's only half of a good comedy. After a delicious opening and setup, the movie really doesn't go anywhere very interesting, and doesn't come close to any epiphanies about the subject at hand, even in subtext.
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63This Brooks is a comedian who forgets the golden rule of "know your audience." He thinks he'll get his laughs if he keeps doing the same act with better lighting.
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63Brooks is always a dry vintage, so the lack of outright laughs is to be expected. But Looking for Comedy is more depressing than funny.
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60A reasonably amusing effort that manages to poke fun at Brooks' neuroses and governmental blundering with equal skill.
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60Not Brooks' funniest film, but it possesses his trademark wry humor and is slyly observant.
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60Front-loaded with inspired gags, and the first half-hour is both sneakily and explosively funny, raising expectations that are never quite met.
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60For the first half of Looking for Comedy, Brooks' hangdog demeanor performs reliably, and there are plenty of solid laughs.
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58Eraser-dull.
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The results are distressingly flat, frequently patronizing and, for a topical comedy, strangely out of it.
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50Doesn't conclude so much as just stop, because Brooks, having come up with a great hook for a movie, didn't bother to come up with a satisfying story to go along with it.
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50You don't have to be a Muslim, or a humorless person of any persuasion, to find Brooks' performance excruciating.
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50Strange that a movie about comedy is so lacking in this quality.
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50At heart, a light, watchable film.
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50The movie has a perversely unifying effect: Muslims, Christians and Jews may not be able to agree on exactly who the heck Jesus is, but they're fully capable of bonding in boredom.
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Brooks is looking for comedy in all the wrong places. He's no longer his own White Whale. He's something slower, in a shell--his own turtle.
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50Almost despite itself, this is a deeply pessimistic movie.
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42The movie isn't racist; it's just lame. If Brooks truly cared about Muslims or how their funny bones worked, Looking for Comedy might have had some zing, but all his character is interested in is the 500-page report he has to deliver - a homework assignment from hell.
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42Looking for comedy in Albert Brooks' Looking for Comedy In the Muslim World is a fool's errand. There's hardly any there.
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40Unfortunately, Brooks errs badly by having his film centered in India. Yes, India - which, as most people know, is not a predominantly Muslim country. Rather than look for comedy in the Muslim world, Brooks uses this film to make fun of contemporary Indian society.
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40An essentially toothless affair, poking fun at American imperialism and its attendant cluelessness while never illuminating much beyond the obvious.
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40The question for skittish distributors is not whether Looking for Comedy will play in Peshawar, but how long the movie will take to put Peoria to sleep.
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40A particularly painful event for those of us weaned on Brooks' earliest films, Saturday Night Live shorts and vintage clips of his deadpan standup appearances. It contains precisely two funny moments.
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38However deep the divide currently separating the Middle East from the West appears to be, there's at least one thing we can all agree on: Albert Brooks isn't all that funny anymore.
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38There's nothing more painful than watching comics tank, and Looking for Comedy in a Muslim World is a 95-minute wince.
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25This is by far the most embarrassing of his seven movies.
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