G.Y. U

What could have been funny and teachable about Judaism and B’nei Mitzvah turned into a tasteless shallow teen romp. The female Rabbi was so over-the-top, trying way too hard to be “relatable.” She comes off being an irresponsible woke idiot instead of a religious role model and adult to these kids. She tells kids “God is random” and that is not the talk of a rabbi but that of a nihilistic airhead. She even has the kids singing this phrase! Adonai is not “random” to Jews! I wanted to throw up every time the rabbi in her hideous 80s mullet made an appearance. She treated the kids like preschoolers when she sang her silly songs during Avodah. The kids are supposed to be 13, but they were dressed like high-priced call girls at times. Highly sexualizing underaged characters is a tiresome Hollywood trope. The mean girls were typically shallow and vain, concerned about designer clothes, looking oh-so-cool and lip fillers. Very one dimensional. Sandler’s youngest daughter was ok as Stacy but she comes off as mean, bratty and unlikeable. The funniest was his oldest daughter Sadie and her friend. She was hilarious in her role as the older sister Ronnie. She tends to steal every scene she’s in and seems to be the voice of reason while Sandler and Menzel were the most inept, fumbling parents ever. Whst mother sends out a video her kid made without watching it first? This movie reinforces stereotypes that all Jews are rich, live in mansions and put on these over-the-top post B’nei mitzvah parties that are more like Hollywood premieres or nights at Studio 54. Maybe in Hollywood, wealthy Jews in the entertainment industry put on such parties but these are NOT typical for your average Jewish family. I have attended many B’nei Mitzvahs and post-ceremony parties. While fun and celebratory, they do not resemble the over-the-top, mega expensive parties depicted in this movie. While I understand the terms used like “Haftorah” a general audience would not. Same for the word “Mitzvah”, a most important aspect of Judaism. In this film doing a mitzvah is a joke, or an inconvenience, or a way to meet the dim bulb jock. The fact that Stacy and that dim bulb jock kiss in the Ark where Torah scrolls are stored was disrespectful and not funny. The fact that Stacey did her Mitzvah project while being all dolled up at a nursing home just to impress the dim bulb jock whose grandma lived there was tasteless. At my shul, kids take their Mitzvah Project very seriously. The fact that Stacy stopped her Aliyah to give apology speech was…no. Just no. She should have started her apology earlier, not before she was ready to chant her parsha from the Torah. Then she tries to take off before reading the Torah to go to Lydia’s house to apologize but is stopped by her father. Guess Judaism and her Bat Mitzvah wasn’t very important to this girl after all. I like the idea that Stacy redeemed herself to her friends and to Lydia by giving Lydia her post Bat Mitzvah party. But events leading up to this moment could have been done differently—it could still be funny without being so disrespectful to Judaism, the Torah, and female rabbis. If our rabbi saw this film, she would have cringed. There are some Jews who still don’t feel that women should be rabbis, and the female rabbi in this movie reinforces that sexist notion because she comes off as an undignified, vacuous buffoon who thinks singing about yeast infections to the kids is appropriate. Sandler was looking for laughs but at the expense of Judaism. What could have been a fun film comes off cheap, stereotypical and at times, vulgar.