Directed by Josh Appignanesi. Starring Omid Djalili, Richard Schiff, Amit Shah, Archie Panjabi, Matt Lucas, Miranda Hart, Yigal Nao 15A cert, Light House, Dublin, 105 min

IT'S ALL about the clash of faiths these days. A few weeks back, we got Chiris Morris's Four Lions, a murky comedy concerning Islamicist suicide bombers. Now well known clever-clogs David Baddiel offers us a farce concerning a London Muslim (Omid Djalili) who discovers he was born a Jew.

The comparison is illuminating. The Infidel, written by Baddiel and directed by Josh Appignanesi, is an altogether less edgy affair than Four Lions. The film features, in essence, the sort of identity-swap plot – minus the supernatural element – that drives so many Rob Schneider comedies. One minute Rob's a surfer; the next he's a fish. One minute Omid's a Pakistani cab driver; the next he's telling anecdotes at a noisy Bar mitzvah.

Yet, for all its crudity, The Infidelprobably comes closer to achieving its humble aims than Four Lions(actually released after the Baddiel film in the UK) did in pulling-off its more ambitious, more transgressive objectives.

The film plays it safe throughout (Djalili’s Mahmud is an amiable, largely secular family guy) but, making few gestures towards the darker edges of satire, it never comes across as bogus or compromised. This harmless picture knows it’s a big, dumb comedy about big, dumb prejudices, and it makes no apologies for the fact.

Djalili, one of the hardest- working men in British show business, deserves much of the credit for The Infidel's partial success. On screen in virtually every scene, he brings squashed humanity to a believably integrated occupant of the melting pot – adopted without his knowledge – and, by dint of sheer determination and irresistible charm, manages to enliven even the cheesiest moments (and there are plenty of them).

The final twist is telegraphed to a baffling extent. The heart- warming lesson is sugary enough to cause hyperglycaemic gagging in a Creme Egg addict. But The Infidelis so warmly inclusive that you'd feel like a real nebbish (or the Muslim equivalent) for disliking it.