Lebanese director Nadine Labaki's whimsical film about internecine slaughter has a tone problem from the very start: a group of widows engage in a goofy line dance while the voiceover narrator bewails the death toll of religious warfare. It's jarring, if not dumb, and the film continues in that vein. It takes place in an isolated village where the Muslims and Christians get along just fine until some kids find a satellite dish. They set it up and in comes the outside world in the form of news stories about sectarian violence. The menfolk get mad and a battle looms. To stop it, their mates first try a variation on Aristophanes's Lysistrata: they don't withhold sex, but bring in exotic dancers as a diversion. When that fails, they ply the guys with hashish. What better way to handle enraged, armed men than by getting them intoxicated? Labaki's film is equally wrongheaded; silliness and sentiment don't trump hate and rage.
