Friday, May 19, 2006

Keeping Up with the Steins (**3/4)


--> --> A lightweight but entertaining, mildly funny comedy about a father trying to plan the world’s greatest bar mitzvah and his son’s efforts to just get through it.


The Steins are the Jewish version of the Joneses, and the way for agitated, competitive dad Jeremy Piven to keep up is to throw his son the most elaborate bar mitzvah this side of Jerusalem, or Los Angeles County. Meanwhile, his son (ex-Spy Kid Daryl Sabara) is just worried about getting through his Torah portion. And the hippie granddad (Gary Marshall, director Scott Marshall’s father), who’s (not believably) taken up with someone who looks like Daryl Hannah, hopes to make up for being an absent father by being a voice of wisdom to his grandson. The humor isn’t particularly Jewish, but the bits of Yiddish and the bar mitzvah rituals will be familiar to anyone who ever had one, and endearingly quirky to those who’ve never been to one. It’s only mildly funny, but it doesn’t suffer from trying too hard either.


posted 8/19/13

No comments:

Post a Comment