You’re So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah review – Sandler family delivers sweet YA

Adam Sandler and daughters score a surprising win for Netflix: a sweet-natured adaptation of Fiona Rosenbloom’s teen novel

I’m as keen as the next person to roll my eyes at so-called nepo babies, but You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, a new Netflix teen comedy starring Adam Sandler and his two teenage daughters, makes the case for some upsides to maintaining the family business. Sadie Sandler as Ronnie, the sardonic older sister who can drive, and Sunny Sandler as Stacy Friedman, a 13-year-old struggling with her first crush, first BFF fight and one and only batmitzvah, are clearly actors in training. But the Sandlers’ affectionate rapport and palpable family chemistry lends the film, based on the book by Fiona Rosenbloom, a rare, sweet charm.

Credit as well to the director Sammi Cohen, working with a screenplay from Alison Peck, for an evocative enough rendering of middle school, that very tricky window between the innocence of childhood and the full thicket of teenage angst. Stacy’s fantasy for her perfect batmitzvah is at once distinctly seventh grade, specific to a certain slice of Brooklyn Jewishness and broadly comic: hot pink and sparkly, very extra, a fete of social adulation featuring a cheesy DJ and punctuated by her longtime best friend Lydia (Samantha Lorraine, the standout of the youth cast) and her floppy-haired crush Andy (Dylan Hoffman). Stacy’s world of Hebrew school coming-of-age ceremonies is serious and silly, a parade of Torah recitations and Twizzler stations, and thus her delusions of batmitzvah grandeur (hired pop stars) are rendered both heartfelt and comic. “You’re always saying how my batmitzvah determines the rest of my life,” Stacy tells her parents (Sandler and his Uncut Gems co-star Idina Menzel), “and I think Dua Lipa will make my life perfect.”

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/qCyPNpG

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