Starring Omid Djalili. Unrated. Plays Friday to Monday, February 18 to 21, and Wednesday and Thursday, February 23 and 24, at the Vancity Theatre

Nobody fights like cousins, and that is what’s funny about The Infidel, an equal-opportunity offender that runs modern London through a multicultural wringer.

There are some fairly obvious jokes here from Yank screenwriter and producer David Baddiel, but in his second feature outing, English director Josh Appignanesi (whose name sounds like opinionated) has enough attitude to sell the notion of a moderate U.K. Muslim, Mahmud, who finds his world turned upside down when previously unseen adoption papers reveal that he was born Jewish.

What really makes things click is the casting of Omid Djalili—a British-Iranian standup comic—as Mahmud, a chubby, round-faced minicab driver who’s not exactly observant anyway. He doesn’t pray much, preferring to watch videos by faded ’80s pop stars.

The stakes are raised when his son (Amit Shah) is determined to marry a religious girl whose stepfather (Yigal Naor) is a reviled hate cleric who is stirring up radicals in Britain. So just as our hook-nosed hero is asked to catch up with Koran events, for the sake of the wedding, he’s also exploring his heritage among the other, genetically identical people of The Book. And things heat up further when Mahmud’s needlessly beautiful spouse (The Good Wife’s Archie Panjabi) suspects him of having an affair. Actually, he’s busy with Yiddish lessons from a transplanted American played by Richard Schiff, whose underplaying nicely sets off Djalili’s slow-burn comedy.

The film has a decidedly sitcom look, and its climactic showdown is too slow-paced to really pay off. But most of The Infidel is as tasty as bagels and baba ghanoush.