Chaplin of the Mountains

The film embraces humor — would you want a one-legged man guiding you through a minefield? — without surrendering sensitivity. The screenplay may echo with atrocities, but it’s not consumed by them.

There’s a simplicity and directness in Chaplin of the Mountains that keeps it aloft; its wholehearted sincerity feels much fresher than any number of slicker, more cynical films.

At its best, the film seems as dreary a travelogue as that Nia Vardalos vehicle "My Life in Ruins." At its worst, Chaplin of the Mountains feels like an overambitious film-school thesis with superfluous political and philosophical posturing.

Self-taught Kurdish-American filmmaker Jano Rosebiani's mostly English-language drama...is deadened by milquetoast characters, uninspired landscape photography, and no perceptible stakes.

Some of the locations and scenes of indigenous musicians make this trip a tiny bit worthwhile. But only a bit.