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June 16, 2006
Feeling some naches
Bar mitzvah comedy offers up a few life lessons.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
The fact that there exists such a thing as the "faux mitzvah"
should tell you just how popular the notion of a smashing party
seguing one into adulthood has become. Even non-Jews want one.
All over North America, Jewish parents compete to throw their youngsters
the most lavish fiesta possible – some costing in the millions
of dollars. As Adam Fiedler (played by Entourage's Jeremey
Piven) notes in the new movie Keeping up with the Steins,
"It doesn't matter what happens at the temple, it's what happens
at the party."
This is the kick-off for the Fiedler family in Steins, director
Scott Marshall's film debut. The former music video helmsman is
not Jewish, but grew up hanging out with Jewish kids and attending
grand bar mitzvahs.
Keeping up with the Steins opens with the bar mitzvah to
end all bar mitzvahs: held on a cruise ship, the party of 13-year-old
Zachary Stein has a Titanic theme, complete with mock love
interest, mermaids and support staff in sailor uniform. "I
am the king of the Torah!" cries Zachary as his model of a
luxury liner swishes onto the dance floor.
Zachary's father, Arnie (Best in Show's Larry Miller), is
a Hollywood agent. So is the flummoxed Adam Fiedler – father
to the about-to-be-bar mitzvahed Benjamin. After the Titanic episode,
Adam and his wife, Joanne (Jami Gertz), go into lockdown mode, hiring
the Steins' bar mitzvah planner, Casey Nudelman (Curb Your Enthusiasm's
Cheryl Hines), to knock it out of the park for their boy.
The trouble is, young Benjamin (Spy Kids star Daryl Sabara)
isn't too sure about what he wants or why he would want it. In a
desperate bid to curtail his father's bar mitzvah obsession, he
invites his estranged grandfather to town two weeks in advance of
the event.
The grandfather, Irwin – played by Marshall's father, film
director Garry Marshall – is an unrepentant hippie who lives
in a trailer on a Navajo reservation with his much younger, new
age girlfriend, Sacred Feather (Daryl Hannah). Naturally, when he
drives his carbuncle of a vehicle up to the Fiedler driveway in
the L.A. suburb of Brentwood to see his estranged son and wife and
the grandson he only met for a few seconds at the child's bris,
all hell breaks loose.
"This is Sacred Feather," Irwin announces while performing
introductions at the front door, "this is Angry, Humorless
Son."
Adam still feels the shame of his own bar mitzvah, which featured
his Uncle Hyman playing the banjo – and is furious at his father
for abandoning the family. This sentiment is not softened by the
fact Irwin insists on bathing naked in the backyard pool and taking
Benjamin under his wing for the occasionally hippie-dippie life
lesson. Ultimately, though, it's that grandfatherly guidance that
gets Benjamin through his bar mitzvah and reconciles a decades-old
feud.
"The day before your bar mitzvah, your sins belong to your
parents," Benjamin's rabbi tells him. "The day after your
bar mitzvah, they belong to you."
What begins as a send-up of excess – and takes some great pot
shots along the way – ends up as a testament to the importance
of family; of understanding, both spiritually and socially, what
it means to become a grown-up – and that you're never too old
to learn those lessons.
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