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Stars: Jonathan Pryce, Jerome Holder, Phil Davis, Ian Hart, Pauline Collins, Andrew Ellis, Malachi Kirby, Natasha Gordon, Melanie Freeman | Written by Jonathan Benson, Jez Freedman | Directed by John Goldschmidt

It has to be said that 2017 hasn’t been the best year when it comes to feeling good about the world. When everybody seems to be against helping out others, it seems timely that a film about two cultures coming together should at least raise a smile, and Dough manages this.

When aging Jewish baker Nat Dyan (Jonathan Pryce) takes on young Muslim Ayyash (Jerome Holder) as apprentice in his shop, at first, they don’t get on. When Ayyash accidentally drops cannabis into the bakery’s dough the bakery becomes very popular, building a bond between the two.

Dough walks a well-trodden path of movies where two people with differences are brought together when prejudices are taken away and friendship blooms.

Elderly in crisis, youngster who can help, drug being salvation and all sorts of drama bubbling around after use of drug – it’s a struggle to rid a particular TV show from the mind while watching this film, even when the protagonists spend more time in the kitchen than an Rv. That said, director John Goldschmidt’s latest, which also marks his return to the craft since 1987, would fill the small-screen mold with utter perfection. In some ways, staying in that state would have been enough for Dough.

But then comes Jonathan Pryce who makes a semi-compelling reason to shell out for the film at the cinema. The powerhouse actor, sporting a beard and kippah, commands every frame with a heartfelt turn as Nat Dayan, the owner of a family pastry joint not so hot in sales and longevity. While he makes his way to the store at 4 a.m.

Dough is a warm-hearted little British dramedy starring Jonathan Pryce (“Pirates of the Caribbean”) as an old Orthodox Jewish baker who is struggling to keep his family’s bakery going, in a tough East End London neighborhood. When his assistant quits, Nat agrees to hire the teen-aged son of the bakery’s African immigrant cleaning lady, not realizing his new assistant is a Muslim.

While this is not a film for serious cinephiles, it has found an audience on the film festival circuit and is now making the leap to wider distribution. The gentle little cross-cultural comedic drama draws its appeal more from its likable characters and their believable relationships rather than its overly familiar plot or comedy, some of which is summed up in the film’s tagline “Dough: It’s not the only thing getting baked.” The charm of this crowd-pleaser is not the contrived humor or...