A film full of great "turns", cleverly cast, performed with brio and written with wry, sly wit and not a little satire--KEEPING UP WITH THE STEINS was a delightful discovery on late-night BBC TV -Channel 1-where it was screened ,mid-week, in its entirety without any commercial breaks and with its closing credits surprisingly intact.This social and family comedy,dating from 2006,was apparently released in the UK in 2009,and has an amazing roster of talents on screen.It casts the traditional US-movie-theme of "I love you,Father" within a sharply-observed showbiz milieu,as well as setting it amusingly in a very specific community.To see it programmed here on nationwide TV made a timely riposte, in view of certain events across the other English Channel....

You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy this heartwarming, funny movie about a Hollywood agent Adam Fiedler and his nearly-13-year-old son Benjamin. When their neighbors, the Steins, throw an over-the-top Bar Mitzvah party with the theme the movie Titanic, Adam plans to top the Steins with a baseball blast at Dodger Stadium. Benjamin, not sure what he really wants but resentful of his father's bluster, secretly invites his grandfather to come to the party--two weeks early. Grandpa Irwin arrives in his RV with his New Age girlfriend in tow. Trouble is, Irwin is estranged from son Adam, having left Adam's mother Rose decades ago. Can Irwin's visit somehow shed some light on the true meaning of Bar Mitzvah? One benefit of the movies is getting a peek into worlds otherwise shut off from you. As a Gentile, I haven't yet had the privilege of attending anyone's Bar or Bat Mitzvah yet. I'm sure am glad to be "invited" to this one! Although the religious discussions aren't as deep as, say, The Chosen, you do get glimpses into a Bar/Bat Mitvzah class and conversations with a rabbi. You see familiar faces such as Doris Roberts, Garry Marshall, Richard Benjamin, Darryl Hannah, and Larry Miller, as well as Jeremy Piven, Jami Gertz, and Daryl Sabara as Adam, Joanne, and Benjamin Fiedler. You get to ponder such themes as spirituality, materialism, and adult responsibility. And you get to have a funny good time!

Keeping up with the Steins is about a young Jewish boy named Fiedler in the days leading up to his bar mitzvah who learns what becoming a Jewish young adult is all about. Add to that the long lost grandfather coming back into town and the tension that causes between his father and his grandmother and you have some good comedic kindling. An additional plot point is the initial scenes as everyone is taking part in the Steins bar mitzvah on a cruise ship – very expensive and intricate planning. Will the Fiedler's keep up with the Steins in spending for the occasion? The acting was good and everything was timed perfectly for the delivery of some good humor, especially if you speak pig Latin.

What bothers me about this movie is that it SHOULD have been better: there's real potential. The characters were enjoyable, the idea was good, the acting was excellent. But the whole things was very unconvincing. It was a common plot: a total idiot has a conversion and sees the light. But for that to work, it has to be at least a LITTLE convincing. In this case, the "conversion" was entirely off-screen, probably because they realized that it was just too extreme to make work on screen. Everything was all solved at the end, in a way that was too pat, too sudden and too simple. So it comes across like a long sitcom instead of a movie.