Jews Hassids Yentas We're All The Same, When Do We Eat? a Movie Review

If you're Jewish, read no further. If you're not, read on.

Have you ever had the hots for a Jewish girl? Has a Jewish boy ever had the hots for you? Have you ever wondered, who were these people? Were they like you or me or were they different? The movie, When Do We Eat? answers these questions and more.

Written by Nina Davidovich and Salvador Litvak and directed by Litvak, When Do We Eat? was released for distribution in 2005. It went nowhere, at least nowhere near us until a Netflix recommendation caused Martha to order the movie for my birthday. It was my best present in years.

Now, I can't recommend this movie for everyone because not everyone likes everyone else's recommendations. But this is a review, not a recommendation, and my review, my personal take on When Do We Eat? is that When Do We Eat? is a work of art, if not mad genius.

Some will not like this movie. While it made me laugh, it may make others uncomfortable. Because this movie definitely finds its center out on the edge, I realize that because many prefer to stay close to the center, they will have a different reaction to this little film with a big heart.

Maybe the Cleaver family actually existed outside the sound stages of Hollywood. Maybe a writer didn't make them up, an idealized family of goyim where the father was, well, so much like a father and the mother, so much like a mother, and the kids although they had their travails, were not a disappointment to those that reared them.

But somehow, I don't think so. Somehow I think families are more like the Stuckmans in When Do We Eat? Like the Seder dinner around which the movie is set, When Do We Eat? is a fable, a fable of familial redemption, perhaps the rarest of all events, even in the movies of Hollywood.

As believable as Blades of Glory and its parent inspiration, Dodgeball, When Do We Eat? takes us on a journey where competition, this time familial (a reality with which many are familiar) plays a central role. Religion and piety and ecstasy and desire all play a role in a drama that is as universally appealing as the clothes Ralph Lipschitz designs as Ralph Lauren.

Who are we? Go see the movie. We have met the Stuckmans and they are us.