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3 stars (out of four)
“Look at this stage,” exclaims Muslim comic Mohammed Amer as he steps into the commodious performance space. “This is a lot of room for a Palestinian!”
“Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert” is a showcase for Palestinian-, Indian-, and African-American stand-up comics Amer, Azhar Usman and Preacher Moss but it’s also a popgun shot across the bow in the culture wars. “Allah” seeks to calm xenophobic concerns by showing that the issues and family foibles of Muslims are the same as anyone’s. Happily, it’s reasonably successful—and remarkably clean for a stand-up concert film.
Usman, his expansive presence made larger by a bushy black beard, probably has the best material of the three. He plays off his appearance (“Not many of you have ever seen someone who looks like me smile before”) and eloquently rips President George W. Bush for pronouncing “terrorists” as “terrace.”
Moss looks primed for Hollywood, with his spark-plug stature and polished delivery. He gets mileage out of his physicality and onstage personas, including an angry black weatherman and his own mother, dismayed at his conversion to Islam.
The interstitial glimpses of the comics’ home lives are insufficient; the film would benefit from more in-depth looks offstage. But it has the potential to be culturally bridging in its way, and that makes looking for Muslim comedy in the Western world worthwhile.
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