When Do We Eat?

Filmmaker Salavdor Litvak's boisterous comedy-drama—which could be titled My Big Fat Jewish Seder—indulges in the crudest sort of ethnic humor before a warmhearted wrap-up brings all the bickering family members together. The head of this highly dysfunctional clan is a harried owner of a Christmas ornament company, whose second wife has planned a traditional Passover meal to please her son, an erstwhile financial wheeler-dealer who has become Hasidic, much to the distress of his father. The couple's other children include a high school-age druggie and his autistic brother, as well as an older sister who's now a sex therapist. And let's not forget the embittered daughter from the husband's first marriage who brings her lesbian partner, an evangelical Christian, to the ceremony, or the Holocaust survivor grandfather who deplores his son's business. The big joke here is that while dad promises the quickest seder of all time, it drags on into one of the longest, partially because past and present animosities rear up, but also because—in a plot twist of very questionable taste—his irresponsible son spruces up dad's antacid with a dose of Ecstasy, occasioning a series of recriminations, rows, reconciliations, and revelations that eventually resolve the family's simmering problems. Despite the fact that the meal is kosher, the cinematic recipe here is so hammy that it proves nigh well indigestible, like a vaudeville routine played at top volume. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)