Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Context is everything, I suppose. Would I have liked The Tiger Hunter, a pleasant diversion of a feel-good movie, any less if it didn't feel like the perfect antidote to mother! ? I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend anyone rush into theatres to see The Tiger Hunter, and I would warn everyone to stay the hell away from mother! -- yet, if you were to insist on seeing mother!, then The Tiger Hunter is the perfect palate cleanser. It's so oversimplified it's just this side of corny -- if not brainless -- but the performers are every last one of them undeniably sweet and charming.

Something tells me no one involved in the making of The Tiger Hunter expected any direct comparisons to mother! Well, here I am! But okay I'm done with that line of thinking now. Let's just talk about The Tiger Hunter.

The title is slightly misleading. You get one fleeting glimpse of an actual tiger in the beginning, an imagined flashback to a revered father's time when he saved an Indian village by killing a local tiger. The "present day" of this movie is actually 1979, which means the tiger incident would have been some two decades before. Again with the context: anyone revering the killing of a tiger in 2017 would be met with much derision. It's a different world.

Even 1979 Chicago, to which Sami Malik travels from Indian in search of the good life through an engineering job, is a different world. Sami is played by 38-year-old Danny Pudi, who is himself actually from Chicago. This means the Indian accent he has in the film is faked -- and now I feel a little vindicated thinking his accent didn't sound quite right, especially next to all the genuinely Indian actors in the scenes set in India.

Other than the accent, though -- which is barely noticeable -- Pudi has an irresistible screen presence, his character relentlessly upbeat. Even his smile brightens the screen, as does that of his love interest, Ruby (Karen David), the childhood friend he wants to marry and is trying to impress with a good job so her army general father (Glee's Iqbal Theba) will approve of their union.

Anyway, it sort of makes sense for director and co-writer Lena Khan to set this story in 1979, especially for one about an immigrant. Setting it in 2017 would make it feel far more tone deaf, given all the current politics. Surely 1979 wasn't so ideal either, but it's a lot easier to imagine as a simpler time for people to come to America filled with simple and idealistic dreams.

Sami discovers upon his arrival that the company that had offered him a job has been restructured, and his only opportunity is a bottom-of-the-rung position literally in the basement. This is where he befriends a coworker played by Jon Heder (of Napoleon Dynamite fame). He's also given charity from a Pakisani immigrant (Rizwan Manji) who takes pity on him and invites him to stay at his place. Although it's part of the joke that they get to this apartment and 12 other South Asian engineers with low-level jobs (plus one guy who "looks Bangladeshi, but he's just black" -- one of the odder jokes in the movie), this offer comes so quickly that The Tiger Hunter is rendered its own kind of fantasy very early on.

Everything about this story is simple, and predictable, straightforward, and unchallenging. Sometimes that's exactly what you want. Even as a comedy this story could really have used more depth -- any depth at all, really -- but it's still fine for what it is. It's unoffensive and ridiculously easy to surrender to its charms; to its credit, The Tiger Hunter never quite gets stupid. Sami is just trying to live up to the reputation of his revered "Tiger Hunter" father. Will he succeed? You know the answer to that, but you'll have a nice enough time getting your expectations met.

*Danny Pudi stars in the least homoerotic movie ever to feature seven men in a single bed.*

Overall: B