This brainchild of Egyptian-American comedian Ahmed Ahmed is basically a collection of his home movies as he travels from the US alongside comics like Maz Jobrani and Whitney Cummings to perform stand-up in Dubai, Beirut, Cairo, Riyadh, and back. The one thing it's not is a probing look at cultural misconceptions — it's not especially funny, either Check your watch as desperate performers who've been warned that sexual humor and profanity is off-limits in Dubai push the boundaries of both, while the supposedly repressed audiences roar with laughter — even at Cummings's long-in-the-tooth bit about women's "slutty" relationship to Cosmopolitan magazine. We really are all the same! But you wouldn't know it from this movie. If Ahmed were truly interested in exploring tolerance, acceptance, and understanding, he might have left directing duties in defter hands. Of course Arabs aren't a bunch of terrorists — but this movie bombs more often than not.
