Dough
Directed by: John Goldschmidt
Written by: Yehudah Jez Freedman and Jonathan Benson
Starring: Jonathan Pryce, Jerome Holder, Ian Hart, Philip Davis, Pauline Collins, Daniel Caltigirone
Comedy/Drama - 94 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 27 Apr 2016
Written by: Yehudah Jez Freedman and Jonathan Benson
Starring: Jonathan Pryce, Jerome Holder, Ian Hart, Philip Davis, Pauline Collins, Daniel Caltigirone
Comedy/Drama - 94 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 27 Apr 2016
The latest odd couple buddy comedy catering to the retiree crowd is set in London’s East End and pairs a cantankerous elder Jew and his new, young African Muslim apprentice. The film may aim to bridge multi-cultural gaps in understanding and ingrained prejudices, but it is as predictable as any film in recent memory. After the first 10 minutes, I guarantee you I could write a startlingly close treatment of the next 84 minutes, perhaps with identical dialogue. Saving the local shop from an intruding, multi-national behemoth, balancing steady work with appeasing the local drug pusher, and even looking down upon his Cambridge-educated son for choosing the law over the yeast are just a few of the well-worn subplots in Dough. Lacking the laughs for a comedy but stiff arming all the dramatic elements which are relevant to contemporary issues, Dough plays it too safe pleasing nobody lest it upset somebody.
Dough has the ingredients for success. Nat Dayan (Jonathan Pryce, Woman in Gold) cannot run his antiquated kosher bakery alone. Desperate for an apprentice, he takes on Ayyash (Jerome Holder), an African Muslim refugee who initially has as much interest in learning the art and science of baking as he does in working for a Jew. The few times Nat and Ayyash clash over their religions, be it about prayer times or other spiritual laws, Dough opens a door to rich possibilities. Unfortunately, it never crosses the door’s threshold because the film settles back into its vapid and repetitive subplots.
Dough has the ingredients for success. Nat Dayan (Jonathan Pryce, Woman in Gold) cannot run his antiquated kosher bakery alone. Desperate for an apprentice, he takes on Ayyash (Jerome Holder), an African Muslim refugee who initially has as much interest in learning the art and science of baking as he does in working for a Jew. The few times Nat and Ayyash clash over their religions, be it about prayer times or other spiritual laws, Dough opens a door to rich possibilities. Unfortunately, it never crosses the door’s threshold because the film settles back into its vapid and repetitive subplots.
Ayyash is a low-level marijuana salesman and, putting two and two together, concludes he can sell more product by mixing the herb into the daily challa bread. Hijinks ensue as the local ladies bridge club get ahold of some and Nat lightens up and unintentionally brightens his day when he consumes Ayyash’s magic brownies. Older viewers find it funny when they see their peers get baked or put into unconventional situations, so look for Dough to stay awhile at your local baby boomer-centric theater. Saving Grace springs to mind for comparison because of the drug angle but the more recent The Lady in the Van with Maggie Smith living out of a garish van and defecating in the street are Dough’s spiritual kin.
Nat’s kosher bakery used to mark the epicenter of a Jewish enclave in the East End; however, the next generation moved on to their Oxbridge schools and the high rises in London’s financial district leaving their parents behind. While on one hand, Nat seethes at his neighborhood’s decline and his minority replaced by an even more numerically superior refugee minority, Nat’s business competition next door sees Nat as obsolete and in the way of 21st century progress. Sam Cotton (Philip Davis, Brighton Rock) runs a chain store in the vein of Tescos and will take advantage of any business maneuver, be it ethical or shady, to force out Nat and build a deluxe parking garage in his place. I wonder if Ayyash’s cutting edge brownies could possibly save the day.
At first, Ayyash identifies ready cash as his ticket to upward mobility and life as a drug runner far more attractive than molding dough into bagels and croissants. Local kingpin Victor (Ian Hart) is a cut-rate Fagin knock-off employing the new refugee immigrants with limited options and even smaller job prospects to peddle his wares. Victor becomes more violent and unhinged as the movie progresses because the plot requires Ayyash to feel the pinch on all sides. Victor even works against his own self-interest as a supplier in order to be the film’s physically destructive villain.
Jonathan Pryce is not Jewish and even though he is known for playing cleaned up Anglos such as the military authority in Pirates of the Caribbean, he looks and sounds believable as an elderly Jewish man with a long memory. Nat needs his bakery because he is just one in a long line of bakers in his paternal lineage. He also believes his crumbling neighborhood needs his bakery to remind it of its roots and fight against the inevitable changes attacking it in the name of modernity. How and to what extent Ayyash as the change agent alters Nat’s point of view is intriguing but Dough never rises above second-hand jokes and predictable developments hinted at far too much in advance.
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