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To paraphrase the old ad for Levy's rye bread, you don't have to be Jewish to love "Bad Shabbos." But, OY, would it help.
The indie comedy, now making its way to theaters from the festival circuit (where it has won audience awards), is the latest in a genre that might be called the Jewish Comedy of Mortification. Of recent examples, "Shiva Baby" (2020) is the sharpest, "Between the Temples" (2024) is the sweetest, and this new film is the silliest. (Then there are classic ancestors like 1970's "Where's Poppa?" and 1972's "The Heartbreak Kid," not to mention the Coen brothers' 2009 masterpiece "A Serious Man," which is in another league entirely.)
"Bad Shabbos" takes place over one long Friday night on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where David (Jon Bass) and his fiancée Meg (Meghan Leathers) are steeling themselves for the meeting of the future in-laws. David's parents, Richard (David Paymer) and Ellen (Kyra Sedgwick), have already welcomed the Catholic-raised Meg into the family - sort of; see below - but the arrival of Meg's mother, Beth (Catherine Curtin), and father, John (John Bedford Lloyd), has tensions running high. They're from Wisconsin, so they must like cheese, right?
Other family members gathering for the weekly Shabbos dinner include kvetchy older sister Abby (Milana Vayntrub), tetchy younger brother Adam (Theo Taplitz) and Abby's boyfriend, Benjamin (Ashley Zukerman), a snide Wall Street type. The vibe is amusing, observant and light, and without giving too much away, the death of one of the characters at around the 20-minute mark is a tone shift from which "Bad Shabbos" never quite recovers.
For reasons that are explained but not terribly convincing, the family moves into cover-up mode, with the imminent arrival of the in-laws ratcheting up the suspense. Director Daniel Robbins ("Pledge," "Uncaged"), who co-wrote the screenplay with Zack Weiner, is clearly aiming for the manic belly laughs of a movie like "Death at a Funeral" (either the 2007 British original or the 2010 American remake), and, to be fair, the farcical complications reach a satisfying level of meshuggena once Meg's parents arrive and the family has to hustle them through a 78-rpm version of the traditional Sabbath dinner that by the end has descended into soup-slinging slapstick.
But the script of "Bad Shabbos" rarely hits the inventive highs necessary to put the movie over the top - the cramped one-set location doesn't help - and, despite characters that verge on cliché, the richest humor comes from the players rather than the play. No matter that Paymer has 11 years on Sedgwick; the two make a believable couple, he turning Richard into a sweet-natured ditherer and she making Ellen a past master at delivering put-downs with a well-meaning smile. (Of Meg's taking Torah lessons with a rabbi, Ellen muses that it's like giving a houseplant that has come down through generations to someone who just read a book on gardening.)
Bass is fine in the thankless straight-man role as David tries to keep the evening from flying to pieces, and Taplitz does what he can with the misfit younger brother, a bitter crank with dreams of joining the Israel Defense Forces - a joke that lands with more of a thud than when the film was shot in 2022. But every farce needs an outside agitator to rev its motor, and "Bad Shabbos" has actor/rapper/ex-Wu Tang Clan member Cliff "Method Man" Smith as Jordan the doorman, who gets dragooned into the action halfway through and proves more than able to meet the moment.
In all, it's a movie to please undemanding fans of Woody Allen movies (the "old, funny ones"), "Only Murders in the Building" die-hards and your nana, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if most of "Bad Shabbos" is cause for indulgent smiles and chuckles, the scene in which Jordan appears at the Sabbath table in a powder-blue sweater vest and yarmulke, ready to pass himself off to the in-laws as an Ethiopian Jew - "the Lost Tribe, baby" - well, that's more than comedy. It's a mitzvah.
Two and one-half stars. Rating: Unrated. Mild violence, goyim in-laws, treyf. 84 minutes.
Rating guide: Four stars masterpiece, three stars very good, two stars okay, one star poor, no stars waste of time.
Ty Burr is a movie critic of 40 years standing (Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe) and is a member of the National Society of Film Critics He's the author of "Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame" (2012), "The Best Old Movies for Families" (2007) and the e-book "The 50-Movie Starter Kit: What to Know if You Want to Know What You're Talking About" (2013). In 2017 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism.
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