By JJ Ledewitz, Arts and Culture Editor
The only thing worse than a Shabbos meal with your parents is a Shabbos meal with your parents and a dead body in the bathroom. That’s what director Daniel Robbins proves with his hilarious comedy Bad Shabbos, which premiered at the Tribeca Festival last year and received a limited theatrical run over the past few months.
The film stars Jon Bass as David, an anxious Jewish man in his 20s who brings his not-Jewish-but-on-the-way-to-conversion fiancée Meg and her Catholic parents to his family’s Friday night Shabbos meal in the Upper West Side. But, once more of David’s family arrives at the Shabbos table, the arguments begin, and soon enough, someone is accidentally killed in the bathroom. It then becomes the family’s job to do whatever they can to hide the body from Meg’s parents, who are still on the fence about her conversion.
Each member of the family contributes something to the antics that come with distracting their guests and preventing the body from being discovered. David’s worrisome father, Richard, panics, but remembers his self-help books — which don’t help as much as his limited Talmud study. David’s somewhat observant mother Ellen doesn’t take the news well, but she understands what she has to sacrifice to keep this body hidden (including an entire brisket, definitely from Zabar’s). His sister Abby improvises surprisingly well, while his troubled, IDF-obsessed teenage brother Adam’s broody personality shines as a great yet equally risky distraction.
But the real MVP of the film is the jolly doorman, Jordan, played hilariously by Method Man, who becomes involved in the secret and helps the family keep it together. He proves himself as an honorary member of the family by taking on an incredibly thought-out Jewish persona in front of the unsuspecting guests, taking the Jewish stories he’s heard from Richard and becoming somewhat of a rabbi himself, all as a huge distraction so that the meal can gracefully close without any death-related discoveries.
A film like this is rare. It’s funny for a general audience, but Jewish viewers will be rolling in their seats. It pokes fun at Jewish culture and customs while still being incredibly respectful, all while making sure that there’s still enough there for those who won’t get the Judaism-related humor. Recent “Jewish” comedies like Shiva Baby (2020) and You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah (2023) have used Jewishness as a backdrop, sometimes even getting a little too close to stereotype territory. For Bad Shabbos, however, director Daniel Robbins made sure to cast Jewish actors in Jewish roles, which made the film feel more true to real-life experience. More importantly, the Jewishness of the characters was integral to the plot. Instead of keeping its Jewishness in the background, Bad Shabbos embraces it and uses it to its advantage, weaving it through personal relationships and jokes that continue throughout. The film takes you out to a nice, well-mannered Shabbos meal and proves that such a meal will never end as calmly as it began, all while teaching you what makes a Shabbos meal with family so special to Jews.
Bad Shabbos is coming soon to cities and theaters nationwide.
Photo Credit: Unsplash