Late in his new film Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, Albert Brooks tells a man, "In comedy, it's okay to bomb. It's not the end of the world." Judging from the success rate of Looking, Brooks must use that phrase as a mantra. His comic abilities have been running cold for some time now, but he's never whiffed as fully as he does here.
This failure on Brooks's part is a shame, because he's devised a terrifically loaded premise. As always, Brooks plays a variation on himself — neurotic, passive-aggressive, worried about work. He thinks he's found a great opportunity for himself when the United States government comes calling; see, they want to try and understand Muslim culture, and what better way to do that than to figure out where their sense of humor lies? So Brooks finds himself trundled off to India on a diplomatic mission to crack up everyone he sees.
It is a fine idea, and one rife with sharp satirical content; alas, it's one whose comic possibilities are almost entirely skirted by Brooks. The concept Brooks runs with in Looking is that the citizens of India don't find him funny. That makes sense from a storytelling perspective, but it doesn't work for comic purposes. Take the big centerpiece where Brooks performs a comedy concert to an auditorium full of puzzled Indians — as Brooks flops and sweats, sputtering out creaky puns involving Gandhi or spinning out an endless 'improvisation,' the scene falls to pieces. The point, presumably, is that Brooks is bombing because he doesn't know anything culturally about his audience or what makes them laugh; the scene doesn't work, though, because the material is unfunny regardless of cultural persuasion.
Even the parts that aren't obviously routines are lacking in laughter. There's a running joke about a very long report that Brooks has to submit upon his return to the United States. Brooks's reaction upon learning of this report elicits no more than a mild chuckle, and the bit only gets more desperate every time he comes back to it (which is approximately every seven minutes). Looking runs aground on Brooks's tendencies towards shtick; every now and then, he'll bust out with a sharp joke (often related to his Jewishness in a land of Muslims) that indicates the kind of film this could have been, which hurts that much more when he retreats to the safety of the tired and the well-worn.
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