The crowd-pleasing movie about a somewhat Orthodox Jewish family, Bad Shabbos, which won the Audience Award at the Tribeca Festival last year, is opening in theaters in New York on May 23 and throughout the US on June 6. It’s a black comedy that will work for audiences of all backgrounds.
Bad Shabbos tells the story of a Friday night dinner where everything that can go wrong does, including a few things no one could ever anticipate, with a plot that will keep you guessing until the last moment. But what’s most fun here is that it plays with stereotypes of Jews, gentiles, and African Americans in an affectionate, knowing way.
Will it offend some people? Undoubtedly. But it will make many more laugh, and a lot of people will see themselves and their family members in the characters.
The lightning-paced story starts when two old men (Josh Mostel, the son of Zero Mostel, and Stephen Singer) walk home from shul on Friday night on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, telling old Jewish jokes, when they are interrupted by something unexpected – but no spoilers.
'Bad Shabbos' is good fun
The movie then flashes back to a few hours before, as a family in that neighborhood, which is filled with Jews of all observance levels, is getting ready for an important Friday night dinner. David (Jon Bass) is bringing his non-Jewish fiancée, Meg (Meghan Leathers), home.
She’s attending classes to convert to Judaism, and his parents have accepted her – sort of. The scene where Ellen (Kyra Sedgwick), David’s mother, micro-manages Meg cutting up watermelon is a perfect depiction of a wary mother-in-law-to-be who just can’t accept her son’s choice.
Meg’s parents are going to meet David’s for the first time at this dinner, and you can cut the tension with a knife, although you’d better make sure it’s not a dairy knife, since Ellen is serving brisket.
Ellen is a bit of a control freak, and David’s father, Richard (David Paymer), is the kind of guy who reads self-help psychology books and then does everything according to them. The rest of the family also ranges from quirky to certifiable.
Adam (Theo Taplitz), the youngest son, stays in his room most of the time and spends all his time exercising, getting upset about real and imagined slights, and dreaming of joining the IDF Shayetet unit, Israel’s equivalent of the Navy SEALs.
Abby (Milana Vayntrub), David and Adam’s sister, and the boyfriend with whom she has a rocky relationship, Benjamin (Ashley Zukerman), drive to the Shabbat dinner but pretend to Ellen that they don’t.
Rounding out this group is someone who feels like a family member, Jordan (Cliff “Method Man” Smith of Wu-Tang Clan), who is the building’s doorman and has bonded with Richard. He knows all about the tense family dinner that’s about to take place on his shift, and he gives David and Meg advice as they wait for the elevator.
Just minutes before Meg’s folks (Catherine Curtin and John Bedford Lloyd) are supposed to arrive, something unforeseen and potentially catastrophic happens, and the rest of the movie shows how this family circles the wagons, with the help of Jordan.
The conflicts and general silliness intensify, but at the same time, some characters show strength and resourcefulness that no one imagined they possessed. The movie ends on a sly twist that should make just about everyone smile.
It’s a classic farce, directed by Daniel Robbins and written by him and Zack Weiner, and the laughs and twists keep coming. But what makes it work is not so much the over-the-top humor but how grounded it is in the dynamics of a Modern Orthodox New York family and the ways in which they are all grappling with their Jewish identity.
The older generation uses this identity to bind them together as a family, while the younger characters chafe at all the restrictions but still crave the connection. The fragile, mentally ill brother who longs to become an Israeli hero is one manifestation of this.
The movie slips into something resembling gravity when Meg, who is studying Judaism seriously with a rabbi, gives an unexpectedly moving dvar Torah (a short commentary on a biblical verse), and it’s clear that she is just as Jewish as the rest of the family, even though she is still technically in the midst of her conversion.
The movie reminded me of an Argentine-Spanish movie, Only Human, from over 20 years ago, about a young woman from a Jewish family who brings her Palestinian fiancé home to meet her parents, and the young man is sure he has killed someone when a block of frozen soup falls out of a window.
But while that movie was set in Madrid, Bad Shabbos has a very different atmosphere. Robbins and Weiner clearly know this milieu well, and they are also experts on the life cycle of an Upper West Side building – I should know, I grew up in one – where the doormen are virtual mayors to a few hundred people, and friendships often emerge between them and the tenants.
The ensemble cast works well together, but the standouts are the superb character actor David Paymer (Get Shorty and State and Main) as the father and Method Man as the all-knowing doorman.
There’s no word yet when this movie will be released in Israel, but my guess is that it may turn up on the program of one of the upcoming film festivals here.