Menemsha Films
I always have a bit of an appreciation for indie comedies, because so much is riding on the script to work — you tend to have more indie dramas that let the feelings linger — and the direction also needs to be snappy enough to keep up with the comic energy. Adding in connections to the Modern Orthodox Jewish community, something rarely portrayed on screen (and even more rarely well) raises the risk too — so naturally this movie takes all that and raises the stakes to accidental manslaughter.
Bad Shabbos comes from director Daniel Robbins and is co-written by him and Zack Weiner (who have collaborated together before), and is inspired by Zack’s tales of zany Friday night Shabbat dinners at his mom’s apartment. Daniel grew up in a Modern Orthodox home, which lends a real authenticity to the movie (with only a few things a little inaccurate for the sake of the story). It was also filmed in an actual apartment in the Upper West Side in New York, one of the more populated neighborhoods for Modern Orthodox Jews.
In the film we follow engaged couple David (Jon Bass) and his fiance Meg (Meghan Leathers), who was raised Catholic but is in the middle of the conversion process to Judaism. The big setup (which is a classic conceit) is this is the first time Meg’s parents will be meeting David’s parents, all at David’s parents apartment for Friday night dinner on Shabbat (or Shabbos depending on if you say it in Hebrew or Yiddish).
But of course you have to include a wacky, somewhat dysfunctional family into the mix — David’s parents Richard (David Paymer) and Ellen (Kyra Sedgwick) are fairly normal, all things considered, although Meg (correctly) worries that Ellen doesn’t approve of her son marrying a non-Jew, and Richard gets a little too worked up about reading self-help books and quoting the Talmud (often incorrectly).
David’s younger brother Adam (Theo Taplitz) is a mess, not studying anything or working at all, and needs a lot of medication to be stable. His sister Abby (Milana Vayntrub) has been dating finance bro Benjamin (Ashley Zuckerman) in a very toxic relationship, and has been getting close to trying to break up with him for a while. But at least the friendly doorman Jordan (Method Man) is on his side and is even a bit philosemitic after many conversations with Richard.
All good for a classic setup for this conflict between faiths and families, but things are shaken up when a prank gone wrong leads to someone dying and suddenly the priorities are a bit muddled — you can’t have the dinner go badly but what are we to do about this corpse? It’s a story that stretches credulity a bit to set this up, but the bickering and worrying lead to some very funny scenes, and a pretty satisfying ending.
Jon Bass and Meghan Leathers do a convincing job as a couple in love that are the normal eyes of the storm compared to everything else, and the ensemble is pretty great too. Theo Taplitz hasn’t done much, but here he convincingly plays a manic role sympathetically. Milana Vayntrub has been doing comedy for years, and her acerbic delivery here consistently are the funniest lines in the movie. Ashley Zuckerman plays his role really well — an intensely hateable character for sure. Method Man is playing his character fairly broadly, but it’s a warm, engaging performance that definitely feels true to life. And of course David Paymer has been doing great character work for a while — this sort of thing is right up his alley — and Kyra Sedgwick plays the classic Jewish mother character perfectly balanced between love, stress, and judgement.
Given the dark premise, there are a lot of laughs and some fun, tense scenes as the family tries to figure out their death situation. If you are familiar with the Jewish traditions depicted, it will be even funnier, but it’s broad enough that it’s not necessary — anyone will be able to enjoy this comic tale, and it even has a few meaningful moments. A pretty well-balanced movie overall.
Bad Shabbos has a run time of 1 hour 24 minutes, and is not rated.
Menemsha Films