40
Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
The film often plays like everyone making it agreed that some on-set idea was so funny it had to be included, whether or not it suited the story.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
30
The cast of old pros (including Bruce Willis as a soldier of fortune) amble through amiably enough, but a few laughs here and there aren’t enough to make this movie come together in a satisfying way.
20
Laughs are few, attempts at feel-good catharsis fizzle out limply, and all of Murray’s most elaborate performance setpieces — especially his endless rendition of “Smoke on the Water” for tribal elders — fall embarrassingly flat.
25
The film quickly settles into a depressingly one-note groove as a culture-clashing circus act.
20
The Guardian by Jordan Hoffman
There’s a special variety of infuriating that comes from a bad movie by talented people.
25
Although no one comes off looking especially good, an acceptable alternate title for the film could be "The Ugly Americans," because Mitch Glazer's script takes some of the worst stereotypes about ex-pats and blows them sky high.
42
Rarely has a mainstream comedy boasting this much talent been so structurally amateurish, to the point that the film’s lack of humor seems a secondary problem to its more pressing storytelling incoherence.
50
This lame, laugh-starved script makes him look like an Old Man — not a funny old man or a Grumpy old man (see the fine “St. Vincent” for that). Just old and not really up to trying too hard.
20
A stunningly misjudged comedy, Rock The Kasbah stretches and strains Bill Murray’s deadpan nonchalance until it snaps, and what results is a singularly unfunny, often infuriating tale.
50
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
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.