Bill Murray and Kate Hudson (Kerry Brown/Open Road Films)

Richie Lanz (Bill Murray) rocks out “Smoke on the Water” on the rubab, the traditional Afghan string instrument, in director Barry Levinson’s lounge-singer-out-of-water comedy Rock the Kasbah. Is this broad cross-cultural comedy a challenge to the oppression of women in the Middle East? A throwback to the days when movie hookers had a heart of gold? An elaborate set-up to resurrect Murray’s ancient SNL recurring character as a hammy crooner?

It’s all of the above, which is part of the problem. The movie opens as Salima (Leem Lubany), a burka-clad young woman, retreats to a cave in her Afghan village to rig a television set to a car battery. Her favorite show? Afghan Star, the nation’s version of American Idol. Cut to a dingy motel in Van Nuys, California, where hard on his luck music promoter Richie hears an audition from a woman with no apparent talent. You expect the stony-faced Murray to break out of his cruel indifference to eviscerate this hopeful singer. Instead he gives her a backhanded compliment: “a grain of sand irritates an oyster into making a pearl … you are that irritant!” Richie agrees to represent her, for a modest fee of course.

Ronnie (Zooey Deschanel) is another hopeful singer tired of singing someone else’s songs. She works as Richie’s secretary, waiting for gigs that don’t materialize. But at a seedy lounge where she’s booked to sing covers, one man in the audience excitedly sings along to Ronnie’s indifferent version of Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch.” Richie learns that this drunken fan happens to book talent for the USO, and he encourages Richie to take his star on the road—to Kabul.

The set-up is a variation on the unfairly-maligned Ishtar. Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty (cast against type) were incompetent singer-songwriters who took a leap of faith for what they think will be a musical tour of the Middle East. Ishtar has finally begun to overcome its bad reputation and enchant audiences as a buddy movie that’s funny and also happens to be an astute political satire. (The brilliant, deliberately bad songs by Paul Williams help.) But where Ishtar lambasted the U.S. government meddling in foreign affairs, Rock the Kasbah seems less interested in politics, despite championing an oppressed young woman. Director Barry Levinson (Diner) doesn’t find the right tone, if there is one.

When Ronnie leaves Kabul with Richie’s passport and wallet, he brokers a deal with arms runner Bruce Willis (don’t ask) that lands him in an Afghan village, where he hears a beautiful voice emanating from a cave. This turns out to be Salima, the woman we saw watching TV as the movie opened. This raises the question: doesn’t anybody else hear her? And if women are forbidden to sing in her culture, and somebody can clearly hear her, why is she not taken out and punished right there? Is her father, who happens to be the village chief, that hard of hearing?

Richie, of course, wants to represent Salima, and, in defiance of her father, gets her to appear on Afghan Star. But it’s a mixed message: after all, she enters her nation’s singing contest not with traditional music, but with Cat Stevens covers.

The movie’s stance on female oppression is a bit disingenuous considering that one of its characters is a hooker with a heart of gold. Merci (Kate Hudson) is an American woman making her way in Afghanistan the only way she knows how—on her back, and in any number of other positions, most of which, she assures Richie, “are illegal in most countries.” She runs a brothel out of a double-wide trailer. The women of Rock the Kasbah are basically entertainers, either in sex or song.

I liked Rock the Kasbah more than you might think—I’m a sucker for any movie about finding your voice, and finding your voice in the defiance of an oppressive tradition would seem to be an easy cause to celebrate. But naming the movie after The Clash’s late-career disco hit (which doesn’t appear in the movie) sums up what is essentially watered down—politically, musically, culturally, and cinematically.

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Rock the Kasbah
Directed by Barry Levinson
Written by Mitch Glazer
With Bill Murray, Kate Hudson, Zooey Deschanel, Bruce Willis
Rated R for language including sexual references, some drug use and brief violence
100 minutes
Opens today at a multiplex near you.