WINNER TRIBECA AUDIENCE AWARD 2024
Set in the well-heeled part of New York’s Upper West Side Jewish community, Tribeca Festival audience award winner “Bad Shabbos” is an entertaining, fast-paced comedy about a Sabbath dinner gone terribly awry. After four previous indie features, director Daniel Robbins should score wider distribution with this tender look at several generations of modern Jews trying to balance the polarities of secular and religious lives, along with the dilemma of a dead body in the bathroom. Robbins and his longtime co-writer Zack Weiner up the comedy ante by stirring in several dysfunctional family dramas, an inter-faith culture clash and an intrepid doorman. A strong ensemble cast nails the tasty dialogue and increasingly frantic action without falling into shtick. David (Jon Bass) and his fiancée Meg (Meghan Leathers), a shiksa already deep into conversion class, are headed for another Friday Sabbath dinner at the home of his parents, Richard (David Paymer) and Ellen (Kyra Sedgwick). But tonight is different from all other nights because Meg’s Catholic parents from Wisconsin, John (John Bedford Lloyd) and Beth (Catherine Curtin), are due for a first meeting with his family. – Variety

“Bad Shabbos takes the best of classic comedies and updates it for today, making it the hysterical Jewish content that is necessary right now.” – Solzy at the Movies