Keeping Up With the Steins
Keeping Up With the Steins is the only movie that I can think of that presents being Jewish in a plainly attractive light. Sentimentality, self-loathing, and victimhood play no part the proceedings. What's more, the movie illuminates the implications of the statement, "Today, I am a man."
Directed by Scott Marshall, Keeping Up adopts the strategy of burning away the ridiculous with satire and then replacing it with the meaningful. The difficulty is that some viewers - such as Stephen Holden at the Times - are going to expect the satire to last all the way through the movie, when in the event it is replaced by a quieter kind of fun. The movie opens with the bar mitzvah party of Zachary Stein, a Titantic-themed extravaganza aboard a cruise ship. The decadence of this affair is best exemplified by the horde of kiddies stuffing themselves with ice cream at a DIY soda fountain: talk about pig-out!
Our hero is Benjamin Fiedler (Darryl Sabara), a boy a few months younger than Zachary and the son of Zachary's father's former partner, Adam Fiedler (Jeremy Piven). Mr Piven has a role that recreates his Entourage agent with greatly increased humanity: when Adam tells Benjamin how proud he is of his son, it's clear that Adam is a good dad and not full of shit. Adam's life looks sunny enough; he's a success, and he's married to the very nice Joanne (Jamie Gertz). Joanne, as is only suitable, is the film's safety valve: she keeps it funny for the right reasons. She even gets along with her mother-in-law (Doris Roberts), who lives in the same house. Adam has only two problems: how to compete with Arnie on the bar mitzvah front, and how to deal with his estranged father, Irwin (Garry Marshall, the director's father), after Benjamin surreptitiously sends Irwin an invitation to the bar mitzvah, doctoring it by stipulating a date two weeks in advance of the event. When Irwin drives his beaten-up camper to Adam's lovely Brentwood home, with his new-age companion, Sacred Feather (Darryl Hannah), the deeper humor of the movie begins.
There are many reasons to see Keeping Up With the Steins, but perhaps the biggest is Garry Marshall's performance. This is shtick delivered by a pro, a verbal ballet of Jewish wisdom. That this wisdom is delivered by a guy who walked out on his family decades ago - something that Adam has never been able to forgive - only intensifies the humanity. The message may not be rabbinical, but it seems right: it's more important to forgive and forget than it is to worry about atonement.
