It might be interesting to examine sometime why Americans haven’t generally excelled at refined farce. The failure—or uninterest—almost certainly has something or other to do with our national history and character. (Can we indict Puritanism again?)

You can’t help but marvel at what a wonderful guy Jacob is. Even if you recognize the actor playing him, Mads Mikkelsen, as the villainous Le Chiffre in the last James Bond movie, you’re likely to respond to Jacob as the opposite swing of the pendulum: Handsome/ugly in the mode of Viggo Mortensen, he operates an orphanage in Calcutta, where he labors tirelessly to save street children from a life of prostitution and worse, his only ray of sunshine a particular eight-year-old whom he has raised from infancy.