With all the ups and downs, and genre cliches, The Tiger Hunter actually plays out rather well. The nerdy little kid form 10 years ago has filled out a bit, and his voice dropped enough to where he actually looks like an adult! He’s never overly amusing or slapstick, but Heder plays a solid character as the wealthy business owner’s son of the microwave company he’s working for. I almost didn’t recognize him until I glanced and the credits and realized just WHO I was looking at. What shocked the tar out of me was seeing Jon Heder (who peaked with his breakout comedy, Napoleon Dynamite, and hasn’t been seen in a major film since Blades of Glory) playing the role of the straight man in a comedy duo. Manji and Pudi both do a fantastic job as Babu and Sami, giving some great performances as well.
What makes the film actually entertaining is the amount of sheer enthusiasm and racially sensitive charm that the movie exudes. You can almost count the film’s beats minute by minute, as Khan uses every old trick in the book to get to our familiar happy ending. Even if there are more than a few rough spots along the way. Sami is your typical fish out of water, and he makes friends that allow him to attain his dreams. When Sami realizes that Ruby’s military father is coming to America with her to seek out possible suitors, Sami and Babu hatch a bit of a hair brained plan to snow Ruby and her dad into thinking that he is a successful engineer and win the love of his life.Īs I said, this films follows ALL of the genre tropes of the genre. While he doesn’t have a high paying job, he DOES get a place to stay thanks to a Pakistani immigrant named Babu (Rizwan Manji), who allows him to stay at his apartment with 10 other highly trained engineers who are ALL trying to get something better than the blue collar jobs they are forced to do.
With that hanging over his head, Sami takes a low level, mediocre, job as a drafter at the same place where he was SUPPOSED to be hired as an engineer, and slogs through his days figuring out how he can attain his dreams.
This leaves the young man with a 6 month work visa, and no way of earning money so that he can continue his stay here in the land of the free. Only thing is, by the time he flies 8,000+ miles to his destination, the job has evaporated due to budget cuts. Deciding to strike out and make a name for himself in America, Sami heads off to Chicago where he has an engineering job waiting for him. The only thing that gives him hope is his lifelong crush, Ruby (Karen David). However, Sami’s talents are sorely wasted in a small Indian village, where the best he can hope for is fixing televisions and old radios for next to nothing. His father was a legendary tiger hunter in India, but gave up his gun, his possessions, and everything that “made him a legend” to give his son a fantastic education in the best British schools. A movie that just exudes charm and optimism, while dancing very heavily with the well worn comedic and dramatic tropes that have been the staple of these types of films for generations.Ĭommunity’s Danny Pudi is Sami Malick, a brilliant engineer who wants to make something more of himself. Lena Khan has vowed to bring back that feeling of hope and excitement with her latest directorial and writing debut in The Tiger Hunter. However, they have slowly faded over the years, leaving us with gangster stories, tales of failure and oppression, and no more light hearted tales of hope. Everyone from Eddie Murphy comedies to full on dramas starring Leonardo Dicaprio have gifted us with tales of hope and optimism in becoming something greater than they were on across the pond. There really hasn’t been a shortage of films documentary the desire of immigrants to make a better life for themselves in America.