YOU ARE SO NOT INVITED TO MY BAT MITZVAH

You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 24, 2023

It is nice—and a bit scary—to think that, no matter how much technology and society change, the difficulties of being a pre-teen and teenager pretty much remain the same. For kids of this generation, it's all about social media, but when you boil it down to its essential parts, that's still all about being popular, right? What's popularity about, anyway, if not the sense of fitting in with and belonging to some group that accepts you? That's the feeling communicated by You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, a funny and heartfelt comedy that comes across as honest in the specifics and the broad strokes of this coming-of-age tale.

For 12-year-old Stacy Friedman (Sunny Sandler), the notion of coming of age is tied directly to her forthcoming bat mitvah, the Jewish rite of passage that marks a transition to adulthood for girls (Yes, the wording of that isn't entirely accurate, but it is colloquially so). Stacy has been dreaming of having the perfect party to celebrate this momentous even for as long as she can remember, and it's always connected to her best friend since childhood Lydia (Samantha Lorraine), who has been a part of Stacy's life for as long as she can remember, too.

Those are the cultural specifics of this film, which revolves around the preparation for the religious aspect of the ceremony and the big party after the fact, as well as the goings-on at a Hebrew school, where the rabbi wants to make sure these kids understand the importance of the ritual and what it means for the rest of their lives. The vital thing about Alison Peck's screenplay, adapted from Fiona Rosenbloom's young-adult novel, is how it delves into the particular details of the how and why of this rite of passage in order to arrive at universal ideas. Director Sammi Cohen's film is as much about being a kid, on the verge of some major change, who is confused and uncertain about what it actually means to be an adult as it is about a religious ceremony.

That is something universal, if an opening montage and description of other coming-of-age rites from around the world is any indication, and it's not as if that process of discovery ends with some ritual. One of the other generous elements of the film is how much space it gives to other characters, particularly the adults surrounding and raising these kids.

There's the case of Stacy's parents, for example, who are trying—and sometimes failing—to find the balance between giving their two daughters what they want and making sure they have what they need. A trio of other adults—namely Sarah Sherman's Rabbi Rebecca, Dan Bulla's Cantor Jerry, and Ido Mosseri's party mainstay DJ Schmuley—are goofy and, to the kids, a bit embarrassing in ways that remind us growing up isn't exactly a hard and fast reality.

Stacy's mother is played by Idina Menzel, as a woman who knows that she knows more than her daughter but is working to give the Stacy enough room for her to learn it on her own (An early bit involving high heels and far more comfortable footwear is a fine example of that, as well as a pretty accurate joke). The girl's father Danny is played by Adam Sandler, and it's no coincidence that the film's young star and the actor playing her father share a surname.

Also serving as a producer, the elder Sandler, playing a well-meaning but often worn-out dad in a most endearing way, has made this film a family affair, with his real-life kids playing Danny's two daughters and his wife Jackie playing Lydia's recently divorced mother. The father-daughter dynamic comes through strongly here, and it almost feels a passing of the torch (The DJ character feels like a character the veteran Sandler might have played a couple decades ago in a star vehicle). The younger Sandler kid, as Stacy, shows a lot of promise in this tricky role, while Sadie, the older Sandler daughter, is also amusing as the cynical, horror-movie-loving elder child.

Most of the story, though, does belong to Stacy, who's dealing with the most important event of her young life, feeling like an outcast—despite having good friends in Lydia and two other girls—at school, and having a desperate and unrequited crush on Andy (Dylan Hoffman), the most popular kid in her class. The complications begin when Stacy has an embarrassing moment involving a reckless leap from a cliff and a floating hygienic product, leading her to resent Lydia for laughing with the rest of the kids who witness it. That's compiled when Stacy spots Lydia kissing her crush at a party, resulting in the two severing an almost decade-long bond.

As for the rest of this tale, it involves Stacy trying to navigate this broken relationship, to sabotage Lydia and Andy's new romance, to get ready for the ceremony and the party, and to feel incredibly guilty for how badly everything is going. The difficulty is in Stacy realizing how much of that is because of her attitude and the decisions she has made along the way.

In other words, it is about becoming more like an adult, with believable and relatable complications along the way. You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah tells that story with good-natured humor, a sense of generosity about its characters, and enough specificity about the eponymous religious rite that the film has something to say about and for everyone.

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