Between the Temples (2024) review

Cantor Ben Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman), whose "alcoholic novelist" wife Ruth (Madeline Weinstein) died a little over a year ago, is in a "state of despair" and prone to chugging down mudslides, so when he reunites with his own childhood music instructor Carla Kessler (Carol Kane) at a bar and she tells him she wants to have a bat mitzvah (which her Communist parents prevented from happening when she was a child), he agrees to tutor her.  It's trying very hard to be this "quirky Jewish comedy" but the humor is so light it's virtually non-existent and attempting to make Ben look "forlorn" (there are many extreme close-ups of faces among other film school affectations) doesn't quite work, plus the added detail of making his character have lesbian mothers (Caroline Aaron and Dolly de Leon) is only in there for progressive points.  I thought casting the adorable Ms. Weinstein in a double role - as the late spouse and the potential new girlfriend - was going to lead somewhere interesting, yet in the end Ben's Oedipal tendencies win out and he professes his "love" for Carla.  Isn't having two Moms enough?  Does anyone truly need a third?