Director: Michael Tuchner Cast: Jeremy Steyn ... Eliot Green Maria Charles ... Rita Green Bernard Spear ... Victor Green Adrienne Posta ... Lesley Green Jonathan Lynn ... Harold Cyril Shaps ... Grandad Wax Jack Lynn ... Rabbi Sherman Pamela Manson ... Sylvia
Description: Why this wonderful BBC drama is not available on DVD is a mystery and a scandal. Possibly the greatest work by one of Britain's greatest TV playwrights, Jack Rosenthal, it is a funny, moving and brilliant depiction of a Bar Mitzvah that went slightly wrong.
Here's a user comment from imdb:
The Bar Mitzvah Boy is not quite classified as a film, more as a play, though it is worthy of film status in my view. It is a very comical look at the dynamics of a British Jewish family on the eve of their son's Bar Mitzvah.
The film was written by Jack Rosenthal (Jewish, and husband of popular British comedienne, Maureen Lipman) and obviously aimed at an audience of British Jews. Every character is a hilarious caricature, instantly recognisable as a Jewish stereotype, with Maria Charles' Rita stealing the show as the highly-strung mother.
However, Rosenthal's humour can be enjoyed on all levels, from the one-liners delivered with perfect sincerity down to the subtleties such as the relationships between the sister and her boyfriend and between the rabbi and the synagogue caretaker. The film is incredibly detailed, even in the conduction of the synagogue service, recitation of the Hebrew and liberal use of Yiddish idioms. Of all the Hollywood blockbusters I have seen, none could be more detailed than this simple, low-budget production.
My father and I both find The Bar Mitzvah Boy hilarious, and an amazingly accurate, yet hilarious take on the Anglo-Jewish way of life, despite its age.
