The Infidel
15, Nationwide
I wish, wish, wish, wish, wish I had liked The Infidel better. I wanted to like it. I longed to like it. And I did think it would be a hoot. It’s written by David Baddiel, a thoughtful, clever and witty writer (usually). It stars Omid Djalili, who has a lovely, big, funny face and is always an engaging physical presence. The premise is neat and brave and topical: it’s about a Muslim who discovers he is adopted and was actually born Jewish. It sounded right up my street, as I do like to laugh at religion. Some days, I am so busy laughing at religion I don’t even have time to tie my own shoelaces, which is why I trip up a lot. But? It’s not very funny and, part-way through, it’s almost as if it tires of itself, and just collapses clumsily into a heap of tiresome clichés. It even ends with a tear-jerker of a speech about how God made us all the same underneath which, aside from anything else, is patently untrue. I, for example, have a famously ravishing spleen. My kidneys are ordinary enough, but my spleen? Gorgeous!
So, what do we have here exactly? Here, we have Mr Djalili playing Mahmud, a Londoner who owns a minicab firm, and tries to be a good Muslim although not in any fanatical way. He has a lovely wife (Archie Panjabi, somewhat underused, as she has only ever to look perplexed), a little daughter and a son who is hoping to marry the stepdaughter of an Islamic radical, who doesn’t seem that radical, but as one of his supporters has a hook for a hand that clinches it, I suppose. Anyway, Mahmud is clearing out his parents’ house on the death of his mother when he stumbles across his adoption certificate and discovers he was born Solly Shimshillewitz. He locates his birth father, who is dying in a Jewish old people’s home, but can’t get near him because there is a rabbi (Matt Lucas, can you believe) on guard and this rabbi says Mahmud has to learn about Judaism first. Mahmud never makes any inquiries about his birth mother, which is weird, considering Judaism is matrilineal and if she hadn’t have been Jewish, we could all have gone home, but there you are. This isn’t a film which lets anything get in the way of the story it wants to tell. It isn’t even a film which lets anything true get in the way of the story it wants to tell.
Now, what else can I tell you, while I still have the energy? OK, Mahmud hooks up with London’s only American Jewish cabbie, as played by the American actor Robert Schiff (Toby from The West Wing; weird). He instructs Mahmud in all things Jewish which, here, doesn’t add up to much more than dancing like Topol and mastering ‘Oy’ before moving on to ‘Vey’ although, of course, there is a lot more to being a Jew than that, like making gefilte fish, having a big nose and buying something in M&S one day and taking it back the next (I live for that). I only laughed once — Omid does a beautiful job practising his Jewish look in a mirror — and that was that.
The rest is ludicrous, particularly the plot twists, which you can see coming a mile off, if not several miles off. Heck, you could be holidaying with the family on the Dalmatian Coast and still see them coming. This would be fine if the comedy was up to it, but it isn’t. Many of the jokes sound written. Others aren’t jokes at all, just Mahmud shouting: ‘Jewish scum’ or saying ‘I’d like to give her some kosher sausage’ when he sees a nice-looking Jewish lady. And when, eventually, the Matt Lucas rabbi gets too much and Mahmud knees him in the balls the one thing you are not thinking is this: my, this sophisticated satire is really getting to the heart of cross-cultural conflict and the bigotry on both sides. I don’t know what Baddiel was thinking of. It’s like the Chuckle brothers wrote this and not just the Chuckle brothers on a good day, but the Chuckle brothers on an off day. When they’re both depressed. (The Chuckle brothers can’t chuckle all day every day; they, too, have their low moments.)
The Infidel just doesn’t cut it as a drama, a comedy, a satire or anything bar a rather dull cartoonish farce. Offensive? Not sufficiently, I would say, plus it has none of the surreal silliness of a Life of Brian, for example, or the proper bite of a Borat. In short, it fails to bring home the bacon which, in the circumstances, is only appropriate, I guess, but still. I had rather hoped it would.
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