Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish

While the title might suggest a performance of Shakespeare's play in Yiddish, only a few scenes are included in this complicated, overly cute, and clumsily executed comedy written and directed by Eve Annenberg, who also stars as Ava, a graduate student assigned to update an old Yiddish translation of Romeo and Juliet by her professor. Stymied by the Elizabethan language, Ava hires three goofy young men to help out—ultra-orthodox-raised Jews who are making a living on the streets through whatever scams they can pull off (including stiffing their own lawyer with a bad check). A convenient dose of magic thrusts the four into the play—the boys as Romeo, Benvolio, and Mercutio, with Ava as Juliet's nurse—in which the rival families have become hostile Hasidic sects, and the ball where Romeo first encounters Juliet is a Purim celebration. Selected scenes are played in Brooklyn settings—a fire escape instead of a balcony, with subway ramps replacing Verona's streets—and a rabbi stands in for Friar Laurence. It's an amusing enough conceit, but the various plot threads are never successfully woven together and the straining-for-laughs cast is strictly amateur. The film does boast moments of genuine charm, but overall this is a better concept than an actual movie. Optional. (F. Swietek)