It's frequently argued that American comedies do not travel as well to the rest of the world as our dramatic exports do. Some major exceptions include features starring Charlie Chaplin and Jerry Lewis, plus TV fare with The Simpsons. Possibly death is a universal phenomenon, while what makes us laugh is a more localized affair.

And this is possibly considered a truism for films heading across the Atlantic from the east. Clearly, at least outside the few art houses and the Sundance Channel, foreign comedies seldom appear on our shores. Probably even less than 1% of the international celluloid yuk-fests even make it onto Region 1 DVDs and Netflix.

So when a studio such as IFCFilms does import a comedy, especially one by the Turkish-German director of the hard-hitting romance Head-On, you expect it to be rather special.

"Special" is not a word that quickly comes to mind when viewing Fatih Akin's Soul Kitchen. But then, according to production notes, this little movie is a tribute to a German genre of the 1950s, "Heimat" films, which were about "friendship, love and life in a village-like community." And maybe it's a very accurate paean. But if so, in the end, so what?

The hero of this tale is one Zinos Kazantsakis (Adam Bousdoukos), who owns a rundown restaurant in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg called the Soul Kitchen. From the eatery's kitchen, which would not pass even a lenient examination by a blind Board of Health inspector, Zinos serves every type of frozen junk food imaginable, especially those able to be fried in heavy grease. And that's the way his few customers like it.

But running an unprofitable diner is only the beginning of hapless Zinos' problems. He smells, his beloved girlfriend is moving to Shanghai, and his shifty gambler brother Illias (Moritz Bleibtreu), who's on part-time parole from the local prison, suddenly needs to be a waiter. Adding to Zinos's Job-like situation is that he hasn't paid his taxes, which are now very much due; he's wrenched his back moving a rusting dishwasher that breaks plates; he's a hired a gourmet, alcoholic chef who's scared away his last patrons, calling them "Culinary racists!"; and he's run into an old school chum who'll do anything possible to buy the Soul Kitchen, no matter how tasteless. But what do you expect from a chap whose first words on reuniting with Zinos are, "Remember kissing the pussy in porn magazines?"

Of course, things go from bad to worse to "worser," until the finale, where logic goes out the window and nearly everyone winds up happy and in love or wealthy or choking on a button.

This is standard-fare comedy, moderate in charm, low in wit, and nil in originality -- which reminds me of a riddle from my youth: "You know what the two shortest books every written are? Gourmet British Cooking and A Millennium of German Humor."

The joke holds true. - Brandon Judell

Mr. Judell is featured in the forthcoming documentary Activist: The Times of Vito Russo and has been edited out of Rosa von Praunheim's New York Memories. In the fall, he'll be teaching "American Jewish Theater" and "Theater into Film" at The City College of New York. He has written on film for The Village Voice, indieWire.com, The New York Daily News, and The Advocate, and is anthologized in Cynthia Fuchs's Spike Lee Interviews (University Press of Mississippi).