This film's idea has promise -- romance between Muslim & Jew in New York, families dead-set-against the star-crossed lovers, refugee facing deportation, etc. But the execution is horrible, and seems to have milked every ethnic and gender stereotype there is.David comes across as a shallow an unsympathetic character... with an every worse girlfriend (pre-Layla). She treats him as a sex object (the classic 1950s-stereotype, just with genders reversed), he lacks any sense of responsibility, and 5 minutes after bad sex she throws him out. Yawn.David's family are shown as fitting the 1950s stereotypes of Jewish Americans all too well. Parents overeager for wedding, bad jokes about plastic surgery, etc. Yawn.Then we meet Layla... who is shown as a sensuous middle-Eastern dancer, dark and mysterious... but facing deportation from the US. She stars in the one good scene we saw, where David (doing sidewalk interviews for his TV show) accosts her on the sidewalk and asks her about her sex life. She responds by slapping him and walking away.I watched this with my husband on netflix instant-play, and after 10 or 15 minutes we were so bored we stopped the movie. For once we're in complete agreement on our rating: 1/10Now that we've seen at least the start of this film, the IMDb user review by "b s" ("don't fall for it ... incompetent script meets cardboard characters", 19 Feb 2008) seems all too true.

I watched David and Layla, and I loved the movie. I usually don't finish a movie in one attempt these days but the movie's story was so amusing that I watched it in one session. I liked how the movie portrays the challenges of dating someone from a different religion and culture and how artfully it injects a clever sense of humor into it. There are not that many movies made about interracial romance, which can this skillfully show how love supersedes the religious/racial differences. I enjoyed watching this movie with a few friends of mine for a second time and we all liked this movie. I recommend this movie highly.

This was the first time in my life that I left the theater before the end of the movie. I just couldn't bear it. You can watch a bad movie and enjoy it for the sake of badness. This was not one of them. This was truly bad, in the sense that it wasn't watchable.This movie is supposed to be, and advertised as, culturally aware and actually promote diversity awareness. On the contrary, its political standing is completely based on stereotypes, superficial knowledge about Middle Eastern cultures, and normalization of hate speech and sexual abuse.There are a lot of offensive and hateful comments about different cultures and identities and these are shown as normal or funny. For example, David makes an offensive comment that stereotypes Muslims ("Have you seen a peaceful Muslim?"), and gets away with it. When Layla asks for explanation, he just ignores and does not try to defend his position; he does not apologize either. The relationship between the main characters is also strange. In their first date, David is drunk and it is clear that his attitude toward the female character would be legally considered as sexual harassment. However, this is presented as romantic and Layla is shown to enjoy it. Moreover, I did not understand why the Kurdish girl is required to "speak English very well" (and this is explicitly mentioned in the movie) to deserve to be loved by an American man.It is an amateur movie in terms of cinematography and acting, and this makes the lack of depth in the intellectual content even more unbearable. The sex jokes are so immature that they are tasteless, if not offensive.

I have seen the film at London Kurdish Festival and as I noticed some men criticised it because it shows the fact that the women is not different from man expressing her feeling,drinking, dancing and choosing her partner( why Kurdish boys can get married to others whereas women can not). Men all over the world should realise that the woman is human being , she has feeling same like men , she can involve in politic like him. In general, the film was a new drama in mixing cultures, giving woman freedom to decide her own life. I shouldn't forget the music which was great. The only thing i was searching for in the film was the Kurdish language which was absent in the family conversations. Congratulations for Mr Jay.