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Keeping Up With The Steins

Review By: Aysha Hussain
AyshaHussain@TheCinemaSource.com

Life is going to throw you a few curveballs. For young Jewish boys and girls, life throws you a bar mitzvah. But a bar mitzvah without a good showdown wouldn't exactly be authentic. With every good plot there must be an antagonist versus a protagonist competing for the ultimate prize. The film, Keeping Up With The Steins is an honest and endearing look at the way people pit themselves up against one another.

The title of the film is an adaptation of the phrase, "keeping up with the Joneses" where the 'Joneses' in this case, are the well-to-do, nosy and highly competitive Steins, a Jewish-American family whom are the epitome of cool within the affluent region of Los Angeles—Brentwood, California. The Fiedler's, on the other hand, are the ultimate underdog family, always caught in at second best. This pitiful existence couldn't be more painful to anyone more than to 13-year-old Benjamin Fiedler (Daryl Sabara).

So if going through puberty wasn't already an awkward experience, imagine having to recite the haftarah (a Jewish traditional chant) at your bar mitzvah (which means 'son of commandment' or more commonly 'coming of age') for which you don't even want to attend, but is considered to be the highlight occasion amongst every Jewish community where the bigger and more extravagant the celebration, the better you and your family look. Likewise, young and insecure Benjamin was not looking forward to celebrating his bar mitzvah. To make matters worse, his proud father Adam (Jeremy Piven) and acquiescent mother Joanne (Jami Gertz) only drove Benjamin to feel more nervous about the big day.

Out of pure desperation, Benjamin decided to take action and did the only thing he could to salvage what was left of his young sanity—invite his estranged grandfather Irwin (Garry Marshall) to the bar mitzvah so to take all the attention away from him. Irwin and his hippie-bound presence exasperated Adam's already well-established nerves about his only son's bar mitzvah. All Adam wanted was to give his son the best bar mitzvah he felt he didn't have when he was young, and he felt Irwin didn't deserve to be a part of the celebration.

On the day of Benjamin's bar mitzvah, which instead of taking place at Dodger's Stadium with hoity-toity food and centerpieces, took place outside their backyard, with a guest performance from Neil Diamond. After twenty-six years of absence and long-time bickering, Adam and Irwin managed to reconcile their past relationship and start over. Had Benjamin not sent out an early bar mitzvah invitation to his grandfather, Adam and Irwin would never have made-up in the end.

Keeping Up With The Steins is a feel-good, familiar film in more ways than one. It touches on human values and our sometimes clouded vision. Oftentimes material possessions and the opinion of others take first priority in life, leaving family ...