You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah - Review Thread

You can say a lot of mean things about Adam Sandler but one of the more admirable things about his career is that for a guy who could have easily “passed” for gentile given his look and last name he has instead radiated a sort of aggressive Jewish pride throughout his career whether it’s in the form of “The Chanukah Song” or Eight Crazy Nights or You Don't Mess with the Zohan. That’s not to say any of these expressions are “good” per se, in fact one could say they’re targeting the lowest common denominator about as aggressively as anything else he’s made, but if one were to write a charitable thesis on his cultural contributions the extent to which he’s endeared Jewish culture and identity to a generation of Middle America bros who aren’t going to relate to Phillip Roth or Woody Allen is an interesting approach. Now he, along with much of his family (the film stars his daughter, Sunny Sandler, and his wife and older daughter also have supporting parts), have produced a movie that seems to seek to extend this pride to a new generation. The movie is based on a YA novel by Fiona Rosenbloom and looks at a pair of tween friends who are looking forward to their Bat Mitzvahs but then have a falling out as they squabble over a boy I their Hebrew class. The film is likely to live somewhat in the shadow of this year’s other semitic themed middle school coming of age movie Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret but as you may suspect given its makers this one may find a larger audience, especially given its rather unpretentious release straight to Netflix. I’m not sure however that its real audience is necessarily the tween girls it appears to be targeted at and to me it in many ways feels less like a direct expression of generation Alpha as it is the work of an adult observing that generation somewhat critically and their attachment to social media and whatnot. Some of those observations land and amuse, some feel a touch “get off my lawn.” The whole of the movie obviously wasn’t made for me, but for what it’s going for it’s not half bad and certainly an improvement over your median Happy Madison production.