This Is Where I Leave You

Film (2014)

With Jason Bateman (Judd Altman), Tina Fey (Wendy Altman), Jane Fonda (Hillary Altman), Adam Driver (Phillip Altman), Rose Byrne (Penny Moore), Corey Stoll (Paul Altman)

Planning to surprise his wife, Quinn (Abigail Spencer) with a cake for her birthday, Judd Altman (Jason Bateman) is himself surprised to find her celebrating intimately at home with someone else. Judd blows out the candles, leaves, and soon afterwards, in a run of more great luck, hears that his father has died. He returns to the family homestead where his mother, Hillary Altman (Jane Fonda), has gathered all of her children to sit shiva. They are not observant Jews, to say the least, but non-Jewish Hillary declares that this was her late husband’s last wish. So they all comply, settling in for a week together.

This extremely irreverent but very funny film features a great cast, practically none of whom are Jewish, to play a more or less Jewish family, and it really comes off. Apart from the bawdy but witty writing, all of the actors under Shawn Levy’s adept direction seem able to rise to the quality of humor that somehow feels Jewish. Letting loose, with very few comedic holds barred, they all exude a warmth and a gentle wisdom, traits that often underlie even the most acerbic of Jewish wits.

All of these actors can let it rip quite convincingly and they do so here quite constantly.

Tina Fey, as Judd’s sister, Wendy Altman, is a master of the offhand swipe, the comment that sounds innocent, but seasoned with just the right Fey-ish tilt of phrasing and expression, turns into a pointedly hilarious almost-jab, a sharp and subtle nudge, a not entirely distant relative of those given by pilpul (Talmudic debate) adepts.

Adam Driver (made famous as Hannah’s boyfriend in HBO’s Girls), as Judd’s youngest brother Philip Altman, has a beautifully weird and obtuse manner that signals outrageousness and intimacy in one fell swoop, a corollary to the Jewish humor principle of attack in the service of wisdom.

Even Jane Fonda is hilariously ribald and way out there, managing to embarrassingly flaunt her breast enlargements while still coming across as the warm, loving and supportive not quite Yiddische Mama. Corey Stoll (the one Jew among the main players) plays the oldest brother, Paul Altman. He is not very funny, but he’s intense, which drives the humor engine in his relentlessly funny siblings to spend more of their time during the week preying rather than praying.

With all stops pulled out, with a constant stream of embarrassing comments and sight gags, all of these actors do, in a funny way, convey a more or less Jewish family coming to mourn and to heal together. The pointed riposte is closely allied with the sigh, the warm smile, the sense that whatever has been barbed has been in the service of an underlying connection.

Jason Bateman (also not Jewish, despite his maybe-he-is name), in the central role, has not created such an appealingly nuanced character in a long while. Besieged, drawn, depressed, under stress from various angles, he exhibits a solitary nobility. This does not keep him from going at it with his siblings in one wild give and take after another, but somehow, in the midst of that, he lets a sense of reflectiveness and quiet integrity shine through.

Remarkably, the screenplay by Jonathan Tropper, who wrote the novel on which it is based, skates along the edge of bad taste at every turn but manages to skillfully avoid it.

The young and trying hard to be cool Rabbi Grodner (Ben Schwartz), who comes to instruct the family about the shiva at their home, is an old friend of the siblings, all of whom insist on calling him by his nickname, Boner, rather than by his preferred rabbinical title. He’s an intentionally ridiculous character, a real caricature of a rabbi desperately trying to be hip, a take here that doesn’t feel nasty, just funny.

At Mama Hillary’s prompting, the family goes to his synagogue on Shabbat (the Sabbath) and we see Boner roll onto the bimah (the raised platform at the front of a synagogue chapel) as though he were a vaudeville act cheering on the crowd. It’s outlandish and the character is a bit sad – working a little too hard – to get people to like him. Unlike the gospel choir brought onto the bimah by the rabbi (played by Ben Stiller) in the charming romantic comedy Keeping the Faith (2000), the rabbinical act here does not feel uplifting but simply off the wall. The family, mercilessly but appropriately, never lets him off the hook.

As complications develop, Bateman’s character has to navigate another major complication with his errant wife and he does so in a way that feels like it’s governed by a dual sense of protecting himself and being just to her. It’s an interestingly Talmudic moment, an additional touch of saychel (wisdom) in this relentlessly charged wit-fest.

– This review first appeared in a slightly modified version under the title “The Family That Preys Together” by Charles Munitz (aka BADMan) in the September 26, 2014 issue of The Jewish Advocate (Boston).