their choosing that they think deserves more praise

 Looking for some quality comedy entertainment to check out? Who better to turn to for under-the-radar comedy recommendations than comedians? In our recurring series “Underrated,” we chat with writers and performers from the comedy world about an unsung comedy moment of their choosing that they think deserves more praise.

Writer and stand-up comedian Alex Edelman understands the tension that exists between living in the modern world while trying to adhere to traditional religious beliefs. Edelman was raised Orthodox Jewish, and while he still identifies deeply with the religion, some of the customs he grew up keeping have changed. Edelman’s upbringing is one of the topics he explores in his one-man show Just for Us, which interweaves a story about him attending a 2017 white-nationalist meeting in New York City with anecdotes from his life. The show played a sold-out run at the Cherry Lane Theatre from December through February and is now playing an encore engagement at the SoHo Playhouse through April 23.

Edelman sees the same religion-versus-modernity tension in Four Lions, the 2010 black comedy written by Chris Morris, Sam Bain, and Jesse Armstrong. The film centers on five British Muslims, four of whom are Pakistani and one of whom is a white man who converted to Islam. The five aspiring jihadists aim to carry out a terrorist attack with the use of bombs strapped to their bodies, but instead they bumble their way through their plans. Though it might be difficult to find humor in the premise, Morris, Bain, and Armstrong’s heavily researched film uses slapstick, gallows humor, and an aim at understanding the would-be suicide bombers to mine comedy out of the dark subject matter. Edelman thinks Four Lions has all the ingredients for a great comedy: pathos, jokes, unique characters, and very high stakes. He reveres the film so much that he refers to it as the “Muslim Blazing Saddles.”

What do you like about Four Lions?

It feels like a movie that shouldn’t work, but it does. You just hear the premise: a movie about five Muslim suicide bombers in the U.K. written by three white guys. You’d think it would be offensive, and you’d never believe it’d get made, but the fact that it’s done with so much love and so much pathos, it felt very warm and handmade and loving, and it just seemed like it was a perfect high-risk-maneuver satire. It skewers Islamophobes and extremists and religion and religiousness, and it’s a really fucking funny movie. This was Riz Ahmed before he was a household Star Wars name. He’s fantastic, as is Kayvan Novak and Nigel Lindsay and Benedict Cumberbatch in his tiny role!

When I first saw the movie’s premise, a “jihadi satire,” I thought, How can this be funny? It’s one of those movies that proves anything can be funny; it just depends on the way it’s done. Why do you think it was overlooked?

I don’t know why it’s not regularly mentioned. I don’t know that in America it hit audiences the way it struck a chord with Brits and British Muslims in particular. To me it’s always been considered an underrated favorite. And it was a challenge to get it made, apparently. They crowdfunded part of it; they really scratched it all together. But it’s got this tiny intense fan club of folks.

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What comes to mind when you think of the movie now, more than a decade after its release?

The sheer tonnage of set pieces. I can tell you off the top of my head ten scenes from the movie, and they’re all shot through with such heart. There’s a scene where Omar (Ahmed) and Waj (Novak) are about to be brought to this terrorist training camp in Pakistan, and they’re standing in a shop filled with live chickens, and their handler asks them if they’d kill each other if they had to, and they’re sort of telling each other, “I love you. I would kill you,” and describing the graphic ways they’d do it. There’s so much going on in that scene — Omar’s explaining to Waj that life is worthless, that being alive is like waiting in line for an amusement park and that a martyr’s paradise is filled with the rides. And also Waj keeps insisting that the chickens are “fucked-up rabbits.” And Omar says, “They’re chickens. If they’re rabbits, where are their ears?” And Waj responds with, “That’s what I’m saying.” It’s funny and different, and it’s heartbreaking. That scene has so many different kinds of jokes, and there are so many lines that I quote all the time. If my car doesn’t work, I say, “It’s the spark plugs — they’re Jewish.”