You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah

4 outta 5

You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah is another of Adam Sandler’s various Netflix movies, but he isn’t the star, his kids are. There has been a lot of discourse online about Nepo Babies in cinema, and while having Sandler’s family in a movie he produced isn’t a selling point, the film itself is quite fun and with emotional moments. The younger Sandlers are capable actors and Adam himself is mostly deployed for comedic quips. Coming-of-age comedy drama has been done before but high stakes for awesome the Bat Mitzvah party is makes for a unique idea. The film is an emotional rollercoaster as it goes from sweet, heartfelt, and very silly. Which is apt because it is a movie about the teenage emotional rollercoaster that is high school. Just with more Sandlers.

Stacy (Sunny Sandler) is about to embark upon her Bat Mitzvah, a coming-of-age ceremony where Jewish girls are recognized as adult women. Naturally, she dreams of a giant raging party that she has been planning forever with her best friend since childhood, Lydia (Samantha Lorraine). Stacy has an elaborate plan involving celebrity guests, each more outrageous than the next, much to the bemusement of her parents, Danny (Adam Sandler) and Bree (Idina Menzel) and her older sister, Ronnie (Sadie Sandler). Stacy’s teacher, Rabbi Rebecca (Sarah Sherman) is engaging in a wacky way to get the kids excited for the ceremony. Stacy has eyes for the cute boy in school, Andy (Dylan Hoffman), but when Stacy has an extremely embarrassing public incident, she sees her best friend laughing and cuts all ties. Even worse, later she sees Andy and Lydia together which drives Stacy mad. She wants revenge against her now former best friend and will ruin Lydia’s bat mitzvah to do it.

Sunny Sandler’s Stacy carries the film admirably. There’s quite a lot of voice over bits which are sort of lazy, but it’s based on a novel, so it feels close to the source and her voice over is expressive. As a teenage girl in high school, the emotional swings are constant. The film opens with her fantasy of what is going to happen as she’ll be lifted by her loved ones and delivered to Andy in a perfect moment. Her initial powerpoint presentation to her family is full-on bonkers with celebrity guests like Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift and Paul McCartney for her dad. She often tries to stand up for herself as a fully grown adult but then immediately regresses to being a kid. There’s a fun moment when she declares her independence by refusing to attend her own bat mitzvah, so her dad just slings her over his shoulder and carries her out of the house kicking and screaming. The sister Ronnie appraises it as good parenting. Sadie Sandler as the sister is great for random cutaways of teenage girl weirdness that her father is unable to understand. There’s a bit where she swings an entire range of emotions over the course of about 20 seconds which just causes her dad to walk away confused and slightly scared. Also, Ronnie has a funny running gag where she’s always catching up on horror classic movies on her phone at inappropriate times.

The emotional crux of the film is the falling out of friendship with Stacy and Lydia over the boy. The two start as inseparable and do weird friend things like wearing the same shoes or watching videos to see who can cry first. But when Stacy sees that Lydia didn’t stick up for her at a critical moment, she cuts her off. The fact that Lydia and Andy are soon dating has Stacy make an incredibly mean video of their childhood memories, and the payoff of that video is harrowing. The scenes when Stacy and Lydia get emotional over their friendship dissolving are effective and both Sandler and Lorraine portray teenage angst well. There’s a bit when Stacy gets closer to Andy in an incredibly stupid way that leads to Rabbi Rebecca catching them. Stacy pleads not to tell her parents because her dad would put Andy in a woodchipper and later when the dad hears about the incident, he loudly proclaims he’ll put Andy in a woodchipper.

Adam Sandler’s dad gets in maybe one or two emotional bits with his daughter, but he’s mostly just deployed for laughs at all his daughter’s antics, same with Menzel as the mother. There’s also Sandler crew supporting actor mainstay Luis Guzman as another father who is there for surly quips. Hoffman as Andy, the object of the girl’s affections, is cool at first but the more that is revealed about him the more unlikable he becomes. There’s the standard batch of funny and mean supporting high school kids that are good for yuks. Sherman as the Rabbi does constantly weird things, like when she starts musically singing about the random injustice of God’s decisions.

Director Sammi Cohen delivers decent visuals for a teenage high school comedy with some interesting frame arrangements in a genre that tends to just look bland. You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah delivers an engaging, amusing and at times surprisingly dramatic take on coming-of-age hysterics.