Universal Language (2024) review

In some alternative timeline in which - for whatever reason - the entire country of Canada speaks Farsi (and a little bit of French), elementary school students Nazgol (Saba Vahedyousefi) and Negin (Rojina Esmaeili) spot money trapped under ice and try to figure out how to get it out, government worker Matthew (Rankin himself) takes a bus to visit his mum and Borat-like Massoud (Pirouz Nemati) works as a tour guide, showing people the various "must see" attractions in Winnipeg.  Several viewers have compared this to the work of Rankin's fellow countryman Guy Maddin, although I believe Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson is the closest in spirit - it's attempting to be this absurdist "ain't life weird" kind of film, except it's not that clever (a few of the signs are slightly amusing) and also quite smug when it has no right to be.  Without any context - or proper payoffs - it's a pointless experiment ... and, if you ask me, the "true" "universal language" is actually ice hockey.  Think about it: on many NHL squads there are players from multiple countries (Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Russia, Czechia, etc.) and a lot of them don't understand English, but are still able to "communicate" with each other during games.