Cohen, Sammi

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    ‘You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah’ Review: She’s Growing Up

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    Sandler family members (plus Idina Menzel) lean on each other in this Netflix comedy about growing up.The comedy “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah” follows the debut of Stacy Friedman (Sunny Sandler), a preteen who is obsessed with the parties that accompany her Hebrew school cohort’s coming-of-age ceremonies.This joyride to adulthood is a real-life family affair: Sunny stars, and her father, Adam Sandler, amiably rides in the back seat as Stacy’s bewildered dad, Danny. But despite the support Stacy gets from her family (including Idina Menzel as Stacy’s mother, Bree, and Sadie Sandler as her sister, Ronnie), the friendship between Stacy and her best friend, Lydia (Samantha Lorraine), is the film’s emotional core.Stacy and Lydia have planned their parties and their lives around each other, but their friendship is tested by the most challenging trials of middle school: cute boys, cool girls and menstruation. When Stacy walks in on Lydia kissing their mutual crush, she can’t bring herself to consider her friend’s happiness with the mitzvah season’s rabbi-encouraged maturity. Instead, Stacy disinvites Lydia from her bat mitzvah, and she sets out to redefine what her first steps into womanhood should look like now that she intends to take those steps solo.The young cast proves deft with the film’s clever script, by Alison Peck (based on the 2005 novel by Fiona Rosenbloom), and the director Sammi Cohen indulges the virgin-mojito passions of preteens while avoiding nostalgia, thankfully. In one of the film’s best jokes, a partygoer requests a dusty mothball on the dance floor: Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” For a split second, the movie’s easygoing, contemporary appeal hangs in the balance. And then with delightful rudeness, the film’s middle-aged, disco-ball-helmeted disc jockey, DJ Schmuley (Ido Mosseri), rejects the song, spitting out, “Let Schmuley handle the vibe around here!” A Selena Gomez song fills out the score, and this goofy charmer of a movie bounces on.You Are So Not Invited to My Bat MitzvahRated PG-13 for language and middle-school bathroom humor. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Crush’ Review: A Banksy Who Might Shred Homework

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      A mysterious artist and a love triangle are at the center of this high-school comedy, which can’t quite decide whether to be preposterous or sincere.“Crush,” the debut feature of the director Sammi Cohen, is a cuddly, flimsy teenage comedy about a high-school love triangle. The plot hinges on two secrets: the identity of a mysterious campus artist known only as King Pun (whose oeuvre includes spray-painting the words “nice rack” by the gym’s basketball cart) and the furtive kisses enjoyed by Paige (Rowan Blanchard), a frustrated, love-struck young illustrator who is suspected of being King Pun. Paige’s flames, Gabriela (Isabella Ferreira), a popular flirt, and AJ (Auli’i Cravalho), a tongue-tied enigma, lead the track team. They also happen to be sisters. Paige’s romantic struggle is at once unusual and oddly undramatic — much like the dynamic between her flamboyantly straight best friends, Stacey (Teala Dunn) and Dillon (Tyler Alvarez), who constantly hook up with each other while competing in an election for student body president.An erratic pace forces “Crush” to breeze past many ideas that never get developed. These include a simmering rivalry between the sisters and a case for the importance of art, which Paige addresses in a rousing speech that is presented as though creative liberation — not sexual liberation — was the movie’s point all along. The scriptwriters, Kirsten King and Casey Rackham, evidently can’t decide whether the film should be sincere — as its endearing leads play it — or preposterous, which it becomes whenever Paige’s mom (Megan Mullally) shows up. At one point, she barges in to reminisce about the time she shagged the lead singer of an Aerosmith cover band.It is clear from the offset which sibling will win both Paige’s affection and the obligatory climactic smooch. The journey there can drag. More fresh is the movie’s sex-positive empathy, a trait exemplified in one scene by Stacey, who delivers a caveat as she thrusts her peers into a kissing closet: “Since this is 2022, we will not make someone make out if they don’t want to.”CrushNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More