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Keeping Up with the SteinsClaudia PuigBar mitzvahs - like birthday parties and weddings - have evolved into increasingly elaborate and extravagant affairs. Keeping Up with the Steins does a clever job of lampooning that ridiculous excess. The comedy is at its best when mocking the sense of competition over these religious rites of passage. But some characterizations verge on stereotypes. Richard Benjamin plays a remote rabbi and author of The Passion of the Jews. (He urges the kids in Hebrew class to tune in Bill O'Reilly to see him tout his book.) The bar mitzvah of Benjamin Fiedler (Spy Kids' Daryl Sabara) is the focus here, but there's a subplot on a rift between Benjamin's ambitious agent dad (Jeremy Piven) and free-spirited grandfather (filmmaker Garry Marshall). Scott Marshall, Garry's son, directs this dysfunctional family farce. Though there are some funny one-liners, there are corny humor and exaggerated portrayals, such as Daryl Hannah as Marshall's vegan girlfriend, Sacred Feather, and Cheryl Hines as a perky party planner. Benjamin's driven dad's competitive urges are fueled when he attends a Titanic-themed bash thrown by his ex-partner and nemesis (Larry Miller), complete with a yarmulke-sporting killer whale. So he plans to launch his son's emergence into manhood by renting out Dodger Stadium and booking Neil Diamond to sing. But Benjamin is worried about speaking Hebrew before a crowd and doesn't fully understand the meaning of the rite. He learns its significance, with the help of his grandfather. As his father and grandfather squabble on his bar mitzvah day, he tells them, "The day I become a man, you're not supposed to act like children."
Keeping Up with the Steins blends humor with heart for a satisfying, if predictable, experience.
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