Available on DVD: “Four Lions”

Four Lions is a comedy about terrorism. No, not a thoughtful, intellectual take on the absurdities of suicide bombing. It’s slapstick. Actually, it’s the Three Stooges of Jihad. Or five, really: Five working-class young men from northern England meet in secret to plan suicide bombings but are so inept they cannot even agree on what to bomb.

“What we gonna blow up, Waj?”

“The Internet.”

“We should bomb the mosque,” says Barry. “It will radicalize the moderates.”

He then begins taping his video claiming credit for the planned attack.

That profound lack of connection between thought and action — how the video undermines the goal of the bombing — is a constant through the film. These are real idiots. In fact, they are clearly more in love with the idea of jihad than they are with any actual goals or strategies. In love with the trappings: the guns, the bombs, the videos, the buzzwords and, above all, the posturing. When one makes a threatening video, holding a toy gun, he is told the gun is too small to be believable. “No, my hands are too big,” he responds.

But that is already taking the film too seriously. Really, these guys are just knuckleheads. And the movie is full of outrageous laughs. One comforts another at the thought of dying: “Don’t worry, you’ll be in heaven before your head hits the ceiling.” Another films himself singing a rap song: “I’m the mujahideen and I’m making a scene/ Now you’s gonna feel what the boom-boom means.”

As a viewer, you’re stuck. The subject would not seem to be funny in any way. Terrorism is clearly a serious matter. Yet, funny is funny, and you laugh despite yourself. After all, with the Times Square car bomber, who locked his keys in the car, and after the underwear bomber, you begin to see that not everyone involved is a Ph.D.

And the absurdities of their beliefs keep piling up. When their car breaks down, one of them claims, “It’s the parts. They’re Jewish.”

What part of the car is Jewish?

“The spark plugs. Jews invented spark plugs to control global traffic.”

The film never makes fun of Islam itself. In fact, Islam hardly comes up at all, in any substantive way. No, this is about idiots and fundamentalism. About zealotry and violence. Our gang never discusses religion; rather, they discuss whether the battery is running low on their video camera.

I did have some major problems. The movie is set in Sheffield, England, and the working-class accents are sometimes impenetrable. The DVD should have included English subtitles (only Spanish ones are offered). But even then, the argot is so thick, even subtitles wouldn’t help: “You givin’ me batty chirps, bro? You calling me a whammer?”

Also, the film betrays its low-budget origins in cinematography, editing, acting and locations. Really, none of that finally matters. Mainly, you’ll laugh even through the credits which contain the notation: “One sheep was harmed in the making of this film.”