For those
itching to see a Muslim-themed variation on The Original Kings Of Comedy, please enjoy Allah Made Me
Funny, Andrea
Kalin's document of a comedy tour featuring three Muslim comics: the laid-back
suburbanite Mohammed Amer; the boisterous, bushy-haired Chicagoan Azhar Usman;
and the lightly politicized Black Muslim Bryant "Preacher" Moss. Kalin
assembles a few sequences that feature the comedians at home, talking about
their daily lives and their decisions to go into show business, but the bulk of Allah Made Me Funny has been shot at a single concert, with each comic delivering their
20-minute sets to an appreciative audience. There's not much that's notable
about the movie from a cinematic or documentary perspective; its success is
wholly dictated by the quality of the acts, which by and large are neither
awful nor hilarious.
Each
comedian does deliver some funny, reasonably unique material about being Muslim
in America. Amer talks about how hard it is to yell for his nephew "Usama" when
he disappears at a Wal-Mart, while Usman jokes about how someone in Iran must
have a bustling business manufacturing American flags to burn, and how it's
hard to get American Muslim kids excited about a religion whose major holiday
requires them to fast for a month. But the bulk of the material here is either
obvious or a little generic—especially the multiple jokes from each about
how women are the real bosses in Muslim households, and it's the men who are
really oppressed. On the whole, Allah Made Me Funny is rewarding for its few moments of
cultural specificity, as when Amer rolls his eyes at the way Muslims bring
ancient mythology into routine medical problems. ("I am troubled by a brisk
wind; please rub me with olive oil.") But there's little here that's especially
cage-rattling or side-splitting. Ultimately, Allah only made these guys mildly
likable.