In exhausting 'Bad Shabbos,' cringe-comedy clichés are observed a little too faithfully
"Bad Shabbos' is a labored farce that borrows from so many other better comedies — 'Meet the Parents,' 'The Birdcage' and 'Weekend at Bernie's' to name a few — that it rarely transcends its frantic patchwork of repurposed gimmicks and tropes. Its lack of originality and emotional depth may have been more forgivable had the film been legit funny. But save a few random guffaws, this whacked-out tale of a Jewish family's Shabbat dinner that goes wildly off the rails may prompt more eye rolls and exasperated sighs than were surely on the menu. (To be fair, it won the Audience Award at the 2024 Tribeca Festival, so the film clearly has its fans.)
It's another warmly contentious Sabbath at the Upper West Side Manhattan apartment of Ellen (Kyra Sedgwick) and Richard (David Paymer). The long-married couple will gather with their three adult children — anxious David (Jon Bass), put-upon Abby (Milana Vayntrub) and younger, neurodivergent Adam (Theo Taplitz) — for the family's weekly meal. Yet why is this Friday night different from all other Friday nights?
For starters, guess who's coming for brisket? That would be a chipper mom (Catherine Curtin) and dubious dad (John Bedford Lloyd), the parents of Adam's Catholic fiancée Meg (Meghan Leathers), winging in from 'goyish' Wisconsin to meet their future in-laws. (Can Grammy Hall be far behind?) Adam knows his quirky, noisy — read Jewish — family could easily alienate Meg's parents and he's desperate for an incident-free gathering. Fat chance.
That's because, aside from the observant Ellen's barely veiled disdain for non-Jews (she's pretty awful to the solicitous Meg, who's studying to convert), Abby's obnoxious boyfriend, Benjamin (Ashley Zukerman), will be joining her, and he never fails to antagonize the unstable, Klonopin-popping Adam. That Adam suffers chronic constipation and Benjamin has diarrhea-inducing colitis is no medical coincidence but one of several predictable signs that, well, something's gonna hit the fan.
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In short order, an improbably staged accident leaves a dead body lying in the bathroom right before Meg's parents arrive. It sets off the evening's desperate downward spiral, lots of silly mayhem and an absurd cover-up. Suffice to say, any sane person would have immediately reported the guest's untimely demise to the authorities — but then, of course, there would be no movie. Still, co-writers Zack Weiner and Daniel Robbins (Robbins directed) don't provide a plausible enough reason for the group to so haplessly hide the corpse, making the death feel like more of a slapdash device than a cogent story twist.
As a result, some may find the film as painful and awkward to watch as it is for the characters to experience. One bright spot is actor-rapper Cliff 'Method Man' Smith's endearing turn as Jordan, the building's hip doorman ('It's Shabbos, baby!'), who considers the Gelfands his favorite tenants and jumps in to help them out of their mess. At one point, he even amusingly dons a yarmulke and pretends to be an Ethiopian Jew (long story). But the ticking clock wedged in to add tension to Jordan's 'assistance' feels undercooked.
The rest of the cast does their best to rise — or descend — to the occasion, with Sedgwick quite good in her largely thankless role as the controlling Jewish mother. Leathers is winning as David's devoted bride-to-be, with Curtin enjoyably nimble playing a kindly Midwest mom. But the usually reliable Paymer seems a bit lost in his oddly-conceived part as the befuddled Richard, a fan of self-help books.
Because the film leans so heavily into its breakneck antics, the folks here mostly come off more as a collection of stereotypes than as realistic people tackling a credible crisis. Sure, it's broad comedy, but that shouldn't preclude sharpening the characters to better sweep us along on their nutty journey. (At just 81 minutes plus end credits, the film had room to grow.)
In particular, Adam, a wannabe soldier for the Israel Defense Forces, starts out too troubled and extreme for his depiction to fade as it does. And though the writers may have been reaching for dark laughs, Ellen and Richard's excuse-laden coddling of their challenged child, presumably now in his 20s, teeters on negligence — or, at the very least, bad parenting.
By the time the film gets around to revealing its more human side — epiphanies gained, lessons learned — it's too little, too late. Near the end, when an appalled Ellen says of the dizzy bunch, 'We're all horrible,' it's hard to disagree.
Ultimately, the movie's heart may be in the right place (Robbins has said the film is inspired by his own New York Jewish roots), but its head not so much. Want to watch a Jewish guy and a gentile woman humorously navigate their relationship? Best to wait for the next season of the Netflix series 'Nobody Wants This.'
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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