by michael fox
correspondent
What’s the difference between the wacky-but-poignant family-reunion farces that Tinseltown foists on the heartlanders every Christmas, and the wacky-but-poignant Passover comedy “When Do We Eat?”
In the Jewish story, the touchstones are generations of slavery in Egypt, 40 years in the desert and the Holocaust. In the sitcom-style Hollywood movies, typically, the so-called painful family history goes all the way back to the oldest daughter’s childhood.
The generic holiday flicks (usually set in the snowy Northeast) strive to reach every corner of the mass audience through the time-honored clichés of resentment and forgiveness. “When Do We Eat?,” which is set in Los Angeles, plays the same chords, but it is grounded in the real, shared history of the Jewish people.
Salvador Litvak’s warmhearted family comedy isn’t manna from heaven, mind you, but it is well acted, continuously entertaining, ingenious in places and irresistibly moving — even if we see where it’s going the whole way.
“When Do We Eat?” surfaced locally last fall in the under-the-radar San Francisco World Film Festival. It received a limited theatrical release in New York, Los Angeles and Miami and came out on DVD a while ago.
In case you hadn’t guessed, the movie takes its title from the “fifth” seder question, which is assuredly not limited to the youngest at the table.
Perhaps a sixth question has crossed your mind: Why wasn’t the DVD released in April? Who knows, but the producers no doubt hope “When Do We Eat?” transcends its late-summer date with video stores to become an annual Passover viewing tradition in the same way that “A Christmas Story” has earned a spot among the holiday rituals of countless non-Jewish families.
The beefy Michael Lerner plays the boisterous, blustering patriarch of the Stuckman clan as part bully and part victim. The son of a Holocaust survivor, Ira has raised his family in exceptional Southern California comfort with the income from his Christmas ornament company.
Alas, he always comes up short in the eyes of his father (Jack Klugman), who’s never recovered from the death of his more gifted son and wife at the hands of the Nazis.
Ira continues the cycle by putting down his older sons with a patented blend of Jewish sarcasm. High school pothead Zeke (Ben Feldman) catches the most abuse. The seder offers a rare opportunity for Ira to resume his ongoing battle with Ethan (Max Greenfield), a yuppie sharpie turned learned Chassid. The youngest, Lionel (Adam Lamberg), gets a free pass because he displays the symptoms of autism.
Ira’s daughters, the sex surrogate Nikki (Shiri Appleby) and the closed-caption typist Jennifer (Meredith Scott Lynn), reserve their antipathy for each other. Needless to say, their enlightened liberal family doesn’t blink at either Nikki’s job or Jennifer’s African American girlfriend, Grace (Cynda Williams).
Ira’s wife, Peggy (Lesley Ann Warren), meanwhile, has all but thrown him over for Rafi (Mark Ivanir), an Israeli with an eyepatch who erected the colorful backyard tent where the family convenes for the seder.
As you would expect from a Jewish film family, nobody tiptoes around the sore spots, hot buttons and land mines. Every attack is unequivocal, and every line comes armed with a zinger.
Zeke adds a wild card to this maelstrom by surreptitiously slipping his dad a tab of ecstasy rather than his acid reflux medicine. The dose works as a catalyst for transformation — not only for Ira, but for the whole brood — though not without a few hiccups on the way.
What puts “When Do We Eat?” over isn’t the sharp banter or multiple subplots or even the satisfying ending. It’s the abiding warmth and love that connects every member of the family — that keeps the Stuckmans stuck to each other, you might say — even when they’re at each other’s throats.
“When Do We Eat?” is available on DVD through Amazon for $19.99
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California