Films that feel fake right out of the gate, don’t usually find their footing. That’s the case with the new movie Between the Temples, which slips and slides all over the place. Not even Jason Schwartzman can save this disaster. He stars as Ben Gottlieb, a cantor at Temple Sinai in upstate New York.
I wondered how Schwartzman would play a cantor, considering. that he doesn’t have a good singing voice. That problem is solved with an absurd plot device in which he can’t chant the prayers and says “Yadid” instead of “Yedid Nefesh.” He’s been on sabbatical due to emotional trauma from the loss of his wife, an author who we don’t care about because we never see her.
A synagogue is often called a shul if one is Orthodox and might be called a temple if one is Conservative or Reform. Caroline Aaron of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel plays Meira Gottlieb, Ben’s mother, and in one sentence she used both the word temple and shul — which nobody ever does. Like the rest of the film, it’s simply not authentic.
When Ben goes to eat with Carla, who wants to have an adult bat mitzvah, he notices the hamburger tastes really great. Carla (Carol Kane) explains that it is so tasty because it’s a cheeseburger, but the cheese is on the inside. Ben spits it out, saying that he is kosher and doesn’t eat milk and meat. If someone is kosher, the person would check to make sure the restaurant is kosher before sitting down.
I’m not even sure if that’s the dumbest moment of the film. It might be second to when the cantor has the rabbi’s daughter (maybe in her 20’s) perform a sexual act on him in his car near the gravestone of his deceased wife.
There’s also the notion that Carla could somehow go from not knowing Hebrew at all to chanting a Torah portion in a lonely three weeks. That’s not plausible.
In addition, in order to get her bat mitzvah bumped up a year, despite a girl already having a bat mitzvah scheduled for that date, he tells Rabbi Bruce (Robert Smigel) that she will give a donation, because you know how those Jews work! Any rule can be broken if you give a big enough donation! It’s a good thing this movie doesn’t arrive at a time when there is a rising amount of antisemitism!
Smigel is a great comedic talent, yet he gets nothing humorous to say. Like a man left in the cold waiting for a bus that never arrives, I was waiting for a zinger from Smigel — but we are left with nothing.
Rabbi Bruce’s daughter, Gabby, is a strange character, but actress Maddie Weinstein deserves some kind of award for making her plausible, despite having to do things no real person would do or say. Weinstein shows some star-power and should have gotten way more screen time, as she is the one bright spot in this film and has a magnetic persona.
The one good joke in the entire film is when Schwartzman says that Judaism doesn’t believe in heaven or Hell but there is upstate New York. Inexplicably, he says this to a priest — because you know how those cantors are! They don’t really believe in Judaism and when something goes wrong, they run into a church for answers!
Directed by Nathan Silver and written by Silver and C. Mason Wells, it is hard to fathom how they made such a boring and lazy film. There is one scene in which Ben meets an attractive woman via JDate, but she is not Jewish. Great, finally some tension. But of course, after about 40 seconds, that’s it and we don’t see the woman again.
Ben has two mothers, Meira and Judy, but their relationship gets very little screen time. We see Judy, who converted and is from the Philippines, try to push Ben and Gabby together. At one point, Ben calls gabby “Gah-Bay” which makes no sense, though it could be a reference to the name given to the person who stands on the bima in a synagogue and assigns the aliyah, but more likely it’s simply one of the many things here that are absurd.
I won’t give away the twist of the film, but you won’t see it coming because it’s totally implausible and you feel bad for the actors who are in a movie they know makes no sense. Schwartzman and Kane are superb actors, but a great chef can’t do much with rotting fish, and great actors can’t do much with a rotten script.
I’m all for anyone getting a bar or bat mitzvah at any age — but a film still needs to be entertaining and thoughtful. There were areas of great comedy and meaning that could have been explored in this film, but weren’t.
I saw the film in a theater last week, and a Jewish couple said it was terrible and asked if they had missed something. I told them they had not.
I’m sure Schwartzman and Kane will be terrific in their next film; Weinstein was excellent in this one. Sadly, Between the Temples is easily one of the worst Jewish films I’ve ever seen.
The author is a writer based in New York.
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