August 25 is going to be a pretty exciting day for Jewish movie lovers, featuring the release of two much-anticipated films: “Golda,” a biopic about Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir starring Helen Mirren, will premiere in theaters, and the Adam Sandler-produced “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah” will start streaming on Netflix. Kveller editor Molly Tolsky has dubbed it our people’s Barbenheimer, and I am definitely here for it.
And now, we’re finally getting a sneak peek at what is bound to be the most Jewish movie Sandler has ever produced and starred in (yeah, even more Jewish than “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan”). The trailer for “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah” was just released by Netflix and there’s so much goodness in it to unpack.
The film was directed by Sammi Cohen, based on the book by Amanda Stern (written under the penname Fiona Rosenbloom) and stars Sunny Sandler (yes, Adam’s IRL 14-year-old daughter) as Stacy Friedman, a young girl preparing for her bat mitzvah amid middle school drama — much of it, of her own creation.
Stacy believes, “My bat mitzvah determines the rest of my life.”
In the opening of the trailer, we get to see Stacy’s ideal party, an opulent event at a big venue, where she wears a trendy Barbie pink satin dress. “If I have a kickass party, doors will open,” she dramatically says, as she campaigns for her parents to get Dua Lipa to sing at the event.
While Adam Sandler did throw over-the-top parties for his own daughters — Sunny had Charlie Puth perform at hers, while older sister Sadie got Maroon 5’s Adam Levine to headline the bash — his character in the movie, Danny, doesn’t really get what the hoopla is all about.
“You could have a ball pit?” he modestly suggests.
“That’s for kids. I’ve had my period for seven months now,” she angrily responds.
“That’s a long period sweetheart,” he retorts, because Jewish dad jokes are an indispensable part of any bat mitzvah movie.
Stacy’s mom, played by Idina Menzel (making this the second time she and Sandler have portrayed a fictional Jewish couple after “Uncut Gems”) also doesn’t share the same vision for the party as her daughter. She makes her try on a navy blue dress that Stacy says makes her “look like the lady that pulls kids out of class when their parents get into car accidents.”
But her parents’ objections about the Jewish rite of passage isn’t even her biggest problem. Stacy, who in the trailer declares that she’s neither popular nor a loser, has a ginormous crush on Andy Goldfarb, her Jewish day school’s resident teen dreamboat, played by Dylan Hoffman, donning a prominent gold Jewish star necklace and a blue and white knit kippah when school is in session.
For Stacy, the perfect future is clear and in her reach, as she tells her best friend Lydia, played by Samantha Lorraine: “Andy Goldfarb will be mine, and you’ll have a cool boyfriend, too, and then we’ll have a joint loft in TriBeCa.”
“In Taylor Swift’s building,” Lydia concurs. (The Sandlers are all Swifties.)
Her romantic, platonic and real estate dreams are all crushed by a betrayal of cosmic magnitude, when she sees Lydia make out with Andy Goldfarb (GASP!) which prompts her to sever the ties of their friendship and launch a campaign of slander against her former BFF.
“She kissed my crush and then he touched her underboob in PE,” she laments at yet another b’nai mitzvah party to a table full of older women who commiserate with an, “Oy, underboob, I’ve got plenty of that.” (May I be a cool enough old Jewish lady to one day utter this line.)
Yet despite Stacy’s dire perception of the situation, she has some pretty amazing people on her side — including her father, who asks her what’s wrong and mourns how fast she’s growing up, and her sister, played by her real life sibling, Sadie, who is funny and dry and wisely says, “I know what she needs because I know what she’s feeling… she needs to process this herself.”
Then there’s Stacy’s rabbi, Rabbi Rebecca, played by Jewish “Saturday Night Live” cast member Sarah Sherman. In the trailer, she offers Stacy some pretty tough love, all from the perch of the treadmill in her office. She questions the motivations behind her mitzvah project and tells Stacy that, “If you don’t shape up, the bat mitzvah is going to be cancelled, sis.”
The trailer also features a kippah-clad Luis Guzmán as Lydia’s dad, and Jackie Sandler, wife to Adam and mom to Sunny and Sadie, as Lydia’s mom. You can see her ringing the Friedman’s doorbell as Danny and his daughter argue about having a mojito bar at her celebration. “That’s why we fought the Nazis?!” he yells at her.
The trailer only offers a little under three minutes of this movie, and yet it looks so very promising — star-studded, funny, full of visually pleasing sets and infectious music. And it’s clear it will be very, very Jewish.
“You’re So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah” is premiering on Netflix on August 25, but if you want to see it before everyone else does, you are so invited to enter our giveaway for a chance to win two tickets for an early screening happening in cities across the country.
