Review: My skepticism was high for Adam Sandler’s new teen comedy on Netflix, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, but the movie is genuinely funny and surprisingly endearing. Sandler enlists his whole family for this take on adolescence and the Jewish community.
Despite being a Netflix Original and a teen comedy – two baskets of content in cinema that have a significantly low hit rate, especially when paired together – You Are So No Invited to My Bat Mitzvah is a surprisingly charming and sincere comedy movie. Adam Sandler’s latest collaboration with the streaming giant contains many of the low stakes, generally favorable sentiments that have been common in his recent films.
So if You Are So No Invited to My Bat Mitzvah is as safe and odd of a choice as he’s going to make in order to get his artsier projects funded, I’m all for it. It also helps that Sandler brings in his wife and two daughters to co-star in this movie, all of whom contribute tremendously and carry the bulk of the film’s runtime.
Because there are large sections of You Are So No Invited to My Bat Mitzvah where Adam Sandler is absent of the movie completely, offering a chance for other members in his family to shine center stage. The film ultimately revolves around Sunny Sandler’s character Stacy, who’s preparing to throw her own Bat Mitzvah opposite a string of adolescent problems – fighting with close friends, pushing against protective parents, the inevitable changes that come while growing into an adult – you get the idea.
All of this would normally be cobbled together into a movie with little production design and marketed for teenagers, but the close-knit feel of You Are So No Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, stemming from the fact that this is a real life family and that you can feel the parallels to events that have actually happened to them before, shines through. The Sandlers put themselves on display here and are willing to be authentic and self-deprecating if it makes for a more compelling movie.
The comedy also hits at a higher rate than expected, usually working best as Adam Sandler rollicks through the script with his usual angsty, occasionally angry tone and inflections. You get whiffs of that same energy from Sunny and Sadie Sandler. You Are So No Invited to My Bat Mitzvah is a neat time capsule that may be endearing and introspective to look back on decades from now as the Sandlers have moved into different points in their lives.
Idina Menzel reprises her role as the wife of Adam Sandler, this time acting warmer to her on-screen husband, as opposed to the staunch disdain she has for Howard Ratner in Uncut Gems. There’s a similar commanding presence to her performance, but this time it’s sweeter and fits snug into the pure comedy genre.
While I certainly liked You Are So No Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, you can still feel the Netflix gloss to it – that it feels like a product churned out from a streaming studio’s content algorithm. It’s a movie with relatively low stakes and a shallow number of unique decisions creatives behind the camera were forced to make.
It’s not that the direction is bad from Sammi Cohen, more so that it’s pretty generic. The movie relies mostly on the charisma from it’s actors and actresses. It has the look and feel of a raunchy comedy, but with a lot of heart.
We harp on the studio comedy running on fumes these days, but there’s been a few success stories in 2023 that may signal a changing of the tides for the genre. Barbie has amassed over a billion dollars worldwide in its theatrical run, and movies like No Hard Feelings and Bottoms have pulled their weight too. You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah may not have received the same run on the big screen in movie theaters, but it seems to be gaining some solid traction in the Netflix library.
And I thought it was a legitimately funny and noble film, one that continues a run of successful smaller projects for Adam Sandler on streaming services like Netflix. Like I said earlier, hopefully movies like You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah will help him get more original ideas funded because they all seem to be doing well and are of a consistent quality.
Rating: 6/10
Genre: Comedy
Watch You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah (2023) on Netflix
You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah Cast
Cast:
Adam Sandler as Danny Friedman
Idina Menzel as Bree Friedman
Sunny Sandler as Stacy Friedman
Sadie Sandler as Ronnie Friedman
Jackie Sandler as Gabi Rodriguez Katz
Samantha Lorraine as Lydia
Luis Guzmán as Eli Katz
Dylan Hoffman as Andy Goldfarb
Crew:
Director: Sammi Cohen
Writer: Alison Peck
Cinematography: Ben Hardwicke
Editors: Jamie Keeney, Brian M. Robinson
Composers: Este Haim, Amanda Yamate
