Film Review: Jewtopia

Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson wrote the play Jewtopia in the early 2000s about two best friends, one a Jew, the other a gentile, who crave romantic religious opposites.  It turned out to be a successful production that played to sellout crowds and inspired a coffee table book.  Naturally, dollar signs and presumably fondness for their love child led them to the next logical step in Hollywood: writing the screenplay.  They both produced as well and Fogel directed, so one has to imagine that they exercised limitless creative control over the integrity of the film version and must solely be held responsible for the results.  Of course, certain stories play differently, depending on its medium, and, sometimes, an objective viewpoint from an outsider can make ALL the difference.  Hence, you get Jewtopia, this year's opening selection for the Newport Beach Film Festival.

Star Ivan Sergei from 15 years ago in The Opposite of Sex

The film's plot borrows from the play's conceit: Adam Lipschitz (Joel David Moore)--who has a funny name, because ha-ha "lip-shitz" (for those who haven't see the musical Chicago)--is a Jew, with very Jewish parents, who want to see him marry a very Jewish girl.  He's currently engaged to Hannah Daniels (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), a controlling, high-maintenance doctor with overbearing Jewish parents herself.  His gentile best friend Christian O'Connell (Ivan Sergei) from childhood reenters his life suddenly in hopes of Jewifying him so he can find a woman to make all of his decisions for him in life.  Adam schools Christian on the worst of Jewish cliches--material we've already heard before squeezed into its 89-minute running time.  Yet, if the stereotypes it examined were as smartly executed as its reference to a typical "Jewish" trait involving over-complicating a restaurant order only to send it back after one bite, the whole experience would have been much more enjoyable for those who have already been around this block a couple of times.

I miss The Sopranos, don't you?

After a unique and well-executed title sequence, the tone is set with quirky, overly cute Desperate Housewives musical interludes.  The cast is chalk-full of well-known TV actors: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sigler Nicollette Sheridan, Wendie Malick, Jon Lovitz, Camryn Manheim, and Tom Arnold (who was actually quite good in Happy Endings, the film).  Also in the cast is Mrs. Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson.  The ample scatological humor increases the stench, and we're talking way beyond Farrelly brother territory.  I'm sure copulating with an inflatable water toy could be hilarious in another context, but it doesn't quite work here.  And the horrendous Hispanic stereotypes and gay jokes are just too dumb to be offensive.

Questions plague the venture, such as, if Christian wanted to marry a Jew, why did he wait until his late 30s to start looking for one?  Does it take that long to mend a broken college heart?  Are we to determine that his lazy work ethic precluded him from actually going through the steps of ever even looking into converting?  These are major issues that undermine the very premise of the film and render it impossible to enjoy in its many unsavory moments.  The major perspective-change a couple of characters experience after another's outlandish lies doesn't add to the missing plausibility permeating the story.

Comedy is subjective and it can range from innocent to offensive stereotypes.  But, regardless of what you think makes something humorous, true comedy speaks to universal truths about the human condition.  And, when one tries to be funny, because they're assuming they've rooted their jokes in something real, in a rather stale manner, they alienate and punish their audience.  However, there were many people in the audience laughing uproariously at various points in the movie.

Afterwards, the gala event included food sampling booths from 35 select OC restaurants, as well as hosted bar and a performance by a touring production of Million Dollar Quartet.