Don't watch this movie or else

 I saw a movie this weekend. Well, actually, I saw two movies and while neither was good, I want to talk about one of them beause it was worse than bad.

I don't consider myself to be a real expert on movies. I knew an expert on movies -- his name is Michael Ellis. Fantastic guy, also an English teacher. He stayed up at Quincy HS and seemed to do ok there (based on my limited stalking) and I haven't spoken to him since grad school. But movies were his thing and I respect that greatly. But, while I'm not an expert, I do know a thing or two about a thing or two. And I know when a movie is painfully bad. This was worse.

Last shabbat, I scanned through the Jewish Standard, a quasi-newspaper published weekly serving the greater Bergen county area Jewish community with ads and questionable content. I like to review it to make sure that I'm still not important. So far, so good. One of the things this paper does is it writes short stories about celebrities when the story has some connection to being Jewish or the Jewish community. And they put the name of Jewish people in bold font so you can know who is Jewish. Because, apparently, that matters.

There was a snippet about a movie starring Don Most (yes, from Happy Days, and, according to IMDB, a lot of other stuff...you'd be surprised). The movie was from 2009-2010 but is now on Netflix so, yay Jews I guess. If we can mourn a temple destroyed in 70 CE, and celebrate an Exodus from 1300 years earlier, so a movie from 12 years ago is pretty much current events. The movie is called Yankles and is about a group of religious Jews who start a college-level baseball team. The Rotten Tomatoes page indicates that some people liked it. Those people are clearly idiots.

There are many levels on which a movie can fail. In fact, before this weekend there were many, but now there are more. This movie actually invented new levels on which to fail, and then it failed. Remarkable. Sing it with me:

Bad acting. Like really, objectively bad acting. Lines poorly delivered, wrong emotions, bad timing. I don't recognize the actors and am not going to look them up to see if they are competent elsewhere. They aren't good enough for me to waste my time.

Bad editing, poor cinematography. The sound was mediocre.

The story or stories were muddled and poorly paced. Characters were two dimensional and confusing and their motives (despite heavy handed exposition) were never really clear. Change was not logical and plots didn't make sense.

But those are just ways in which the movie was bad. Let us also consider how the movie was embarrassing and actually offensive, completing the trifecta of tortuously bad and unwatchable movies.

Clearly, someone Jewish was involved in the making of this movie. But this Jew was consulted early in the process and then dropped off on the side of the road somewhere, never to be heard from again. The casting led to inauthentic perfomances that were laughably bad, except I was crying too hard to laugh. And not the good kind of crying. Somehow, this movie made all branches of Judaism look stupid and it tapped in to the absolute worst misunderstandings of what this religion is. Couple that with bad acting by people who don't understand what they are doing and why, and you get a really horrible representation of Jews. Jews singing, Jews studying, Jews just having conversations and relating to each other -- poorly done, inaccurate and offensive. And then there were the other ones...

Every stereotype you can imagine was there, and in the most offensive way. Every racial or ethnic group was represented in the worst way you can imagine. No, worse than that. You can't even imagine how horrible it is and I refuse to repeat some of the truly egregious stuff. I'll just put it out that the team recruits players who are black because of their assumed athletic prowess, and the Jews eat in a Chinese restaurant (which ticks off so many stereotypes efficiently, so I'll give them that) which leads to a "hilarious" moment of repeated bowing.

The ultimate religious lessons are hypocritical and destructive. The messages are problematic. It was excruciating even to fast forward through scenes (the "Purim?" party and the music performed there was really tough to experience and didn't even watch it. Still painful).

Are there positive elements? A little of the acting did rise to the level of "acting" and the actors held the books right side up so there's that. But other than that, no, there was nothing good. 

So, in sum, I'm not saying "don't watch it" but I am saying that if you watch it, I will come to your house and punch your television. Or phone. I don't judge. Except this move -- that, I judge and it deserves the death penalty.

And so you should know, this review is way too nice to this movie.