The Tiger Hunter

There has been no shortage of films tracking the immigrant pursuit of the American dream, but few have been as laugh-out-loud delightful as The Tiger Hunter, a sparkling first feature by Lena Khan.

There’s enough good-naturedness and cultural specificity here, alongside a slight deviation from the usual immigrant narratives, to render it a dollop of sweetness and novelty that goes down easy.

With a likable cast and a wholesome message about the true meaning of success, The Tiger Hunter might balk at the harsher details of immigrant life, but it has a generosity of spirit that lifts everyone up.

The Tiger Hunter isn’t exactly the most woke comic effort you’ll see in 2017, but there’s a particular pleasure taken in watching Khan pick apart our beloved national fable through a South Asian lens, even though that lens indulges a traditional and long-expired style of racial profiling.

When it doesn’t work, it’s because it tries too hard to provoke laughter with clichéd jokes and subpar physical comedy.

Thanks to the director Khan — who co-wrote the script and has an obvious fondness for her characters — The Tiger Hunter transcends comic stereotypes. But its predictable success-story arc isn’t entirely convincing.

Immigrant stories certainly don’t demand tragedy to be legitimate, but The Tiger Hunter, with its pastiche of fish-out-of-water comedy and pointy collared shirts, ultimately feels weightless.