The British comedy Dough treads the familiar territory of the mismatched buddy movie, specifically the Old Guy/Young Guy type. Dough is distinguished from the rest of the genre by a culture clash element and the eminent actor Jonathan Pryce. The story is set in contemporary London and the Old Guy is an Orthodox Jewish bakeshop owner (Pryce) and the Young Guy is a Muslim African refugee drug dealer (Jerome Holder).
The main characters are thrown together uncomfortably in the bakeshop, which is inexorably dying until Young Guy accidentally launches a new product line when he drops marijuana into the dough. Suddenly business begins to boom, and all would be well but for two villains, a reptilian business rival and a scary skinhead drug lord.
Jonathan Pryce and Holder act as well as they can with this material, as does the sprightly Pauline Collins (Shirley Valentine). But you’ve seen every one of Dough’s plot developments in a movie before. The villains and the physical comedy are WAY too broad. Overall, Dough is better than the average sitcom on broadcast TV, but pretty banal.
Light, fluffy and empty, Dough is the Twinkie of movies. I don’t choose to eat Twinkies myself, but I understand that sometimes you might want one.