From comedian David Baddiel comes a film about North London secular Muslim Mahmud Nasir who suffers an identity crisis after finding out that he is adopted. And that his biological parents were Jewish.

Mahmud’s identity crisis also manages to unfortunately coincide with an important period in his son’s life: he is to meet the father of his beloved girlfriend, who just happens to be a fundamentalist cleric.

There is some great potential in the set-up, with plenty of scope to question links between religion and identity, to poke fun at stereotypes, and to mock the nastiness of religious extremes. What’s more, attaching Omid Djalili as the lead appeared to provide a good chance for some loud, brash physical comedy to supplement the more cerebral subject matter pertaining to identity and religion.

Sadly, the film fails miserably to deliver on both counts. Baddiel provides us with a script that tries so desperately to avoid offence that it ends up relying on tired stereotyped, laboured moments of absurdism and the strangely lacklustre performance of Djalili. Even a final scene in which Mahmud confronts the extremist cleric who has dogged the proceeding of the film it is only to reveal an utterly ridiculous and painfully unfunny twist that awkwardly body swerves any real value judgement.

This is not, of course, to say that all films need to face their subject matter full-on to succeed, a light-hearted comedy would have been, if less exciting, at least palatable. Yet The Infidel couldn’t even manage light playfulness. Scenes of Mahmud looking miserable frequently dragged the tempo down, and the interspersed scenes involving his dying biological father attended by an unusually muted Matt Lucas were not just slow but downright depressing.

It’s hard to find anything redeeming in this comedy. It’s overly cautious, derivative and fails to get to grips with its subject matter. A complete waste of time.

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By: Mike Edwards