‘You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah’ Movie Review: Sammi Cohen Directs Another Great Coming-Of-Age Tale
Despite a predictable story, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah remains a fun coming-of-age tale filled with great performances and perfectly-timed comedy.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
It’s an Uncut Gems reunion with Adam Sandler and Idina Menzel as they play a married couple once again in You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah. But unlike that movie, they’re not on the cusp of divorce and have raised two children (both played by Sandler’s kids, Sadie Sandler & Sunny Sandler), slowly transitioning from teenhood to adulthood.
Their youngest daughter, Stacy Friedman (Sunny), is preparing for her Bat Mitzvah with her best friend Lydia (Samantha Lorraine). Everything seems to be going well until Stacy sees Lydia kiss her boy crush, Andy Goldfarb (Dylan Hoffman), at a party. From there, their friendship gets tested, with Stacy disinviting Lydia to her Bat Mitzvah and plotting to ruin Lydia’s celebration. Of course, those who have seen a coming-of-age tale with that same throughline will see everything coming a mile away, but You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah counters that with massive amounts of heart and great performances to anchor the film.
Menzel and Sandler are great together and are perhaps a better on-screen fit than Sandler’s real-life wife, Jackie Sandler, who plays Lydia’s mother (she mostly shares the screen with Luis Guzmán playing Lydia’s divorced father, and he steals every single scene he’s in). It may be Uncut Gems bias flowing through right now, as I think it’s the best film of the 2010s, but it felt so familiar seeing them on screen and playing complete opposites to Howard and Dinah Ratner in Uncut Gems. And yet, their banter is the same, and they feel at home starring in a cutesy and extremely clichéd coming-of-age film.
However, Sandler and Menzel take the backseat and are more supporting players to the story than the leads. Sandler pops up from time to time, giving much-needed advice to Stacy, but he’s not the main character. However, he does have his fair share of hilarious moments, including sleeping at the store while Stacy and her mother are looking for a Bat Mitzvah dress (anyone can relate) and showing up at the movie theater with a bathrobe. Who doesn’t want to show up to a movie theater like that, especially when, for us critics, it’s mostly our second home?
Instead, the film's real star is Sunny Sandler’s Stacy, which the movie focuses on. Her arc is incredibly predictable, and it’s part of why the film isn’t as strong as it should be. However, she gives a great performance and anchors most of the movie's emotional progression, especially through her relationship with Lorraine’s Lydia, who is as terrific as Sunny. The two have incredible chemistry together and with some of the minor side characters who populate the school, including Andy Goldfarb (the jock) and Mateo (Dean Scott Vazquez, who portrays the smart and respectable kid everyone likes, but Stacy doesn’t seem to know that, deep down, she likes him too).
The film is directed by Sammi Cohen, who previously helmed another great and severely underrated coming-of-age tale last year in Crush. It had an aggressively paint-by-numbers story that Cohen helped elevate through its lead performances, especially from Rowan Blanchard and Auli’i Cravalho. It seems they were the perfect fit for this one, as it follows the same storytelling beats but has great acting and extremely earnest humor from all of its colorful characters to work on its own.
I’ll admit I wasn’t too into the movie as it started, knowing pretty much every story beat as it unfolded. However, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah quickly won me over through its lead performances and surprisingly sharp humor that it became an easily enjoyable and fun late Saturday night watch on Netflix. Some of the running jokes in this film are terrific, and Adam Sandler and Idina Menzel need to be in more movies already. Make it a regular Robert De Niro/Al Pacino-style collaboration. Perhaps another one with the Safdie brothers?