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Keeping up with the Steins follows a Beverly Hills Jewish
couple, the Fiedlers, planning their son's bar mitzvah. It opens with the
celebrations of one Max Stein's passage into Jewish adulthood. Hosted on a
cruise ship with a Kate Winslet lookalike, motorized icebergs, and A-list
celebrity attendees, the Titanic-themed events reeks of decadence and
excess. However, Adam Fiedler, a business rival of Max Stein's father, is
determined to outdo him. Like any modern family movie, however, the
materialistic protagonist loses track of what's important in life, then finds
it again, bringing the film to a heartwarming and karmic conclusion.
Distancing myself from my inherited Semitism, looking at the film from a
more gentile perspective, it falls flat. Plot devices are very loosely
connected, often only tied together by the same drippingly sweet music you
find in all Hollywood family movies. The boy-in-transition Benjamin Fiedler
is sweet and awkward, stumbling through the tribulations of seventh grade.
While screwing up hopelessly each situation he comes across, be it asking the
pretty girl to his bar mitzvah or experimenting with his parents' liquor, his
quirky grandfather helps him avoid any real damage. As he gains confidence,
he learns the true meaning of a bar mitzvah, and stands up against his
father's material perversion of the sacred ritual.
As a movie, this film is subpar. As a dopey-but-charming family film,
it's adequate. As a Jewish comedy, however, one that pokes a Semite in all
the right places, it's superb. While the basic rite-of-passage story may be a
little formulaic, its meandering plot winds its way around all the facets
of modern Jewish culture. From the overbearing grandmother to the distant
rabbi, the cracking-voice chanting to the attempts at acts of Manhood, the
movie feels like one big Jewish in-joke. Goyim be warned; you'd best
have been to at least a few Jewish family dinners before attempting to watch
this flick.
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