You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah
Director: Sammi Cohen
Year Released: 2023
Rating: 1.5
Thirteen-year-old Stacy (Sunny Sandler) is supposed to be preparing for her bat mitzvah along with her best friend Lydia (Samantha Lorraine), but it gets complicated when she's humiliated during a quarry jump incident and then finds out Lydia is "dating" her long-time crush Andy (Dylan Hoffman); hostilities between them continue to escalate (in a purely middle school sense) until their friendship is ruined. This will probably appeal to its target audience, but anyone slightly older might find the petty squabbling and drama almost unendurable and there are considerably more awkward moments than funny ones ... although comedian and SNL cast member Sarah Sherman has some fun playing a quirky rabbi. Adam Sandler, who has a supporting role as Stacy's father, faced criticism for putting his family members in this but that's common for his Happy Madison Productions (real-life wife Jackie plays Lydia's mother, his other daughter Sadie's there too) and there are several filmmakers who have done the same thing (like Scorsese, Coppola and Eastwood). What he should have been criticized for was greenlighting a movie in which girls are shown to be less mature than boys.