(rated PG-13, 131 mins.)
Edward Norton makes his directorial debut in a flick about best friends since they were kids, Rabbi Jacob Schram (Ben Stiller) and Father Brian Finn (Norton) as dynamic and popular young men living and working on New York’s Upper West Side. When Anna Reilly (Jenna Elfman), once their childhood and third musketeer friend now grown in a beautiful corporate executive, suddenly returns to the city, she reenters Jake’s and Brian’s lives and hearts with a vengeance. Sparks fly and an unusual and complicated love triangle ensues. Maybe it’s the crowd pleasing young, hot actors, maybe it’s the veteran actors joining in, but whatever it is, it works, in a stylistic version of the age old joke “A priest and a Rabbi walk into a bar..” No pretense, (think Elfman’s character “Dharma” in a movie), yet very predictable plot that somehow enthralls us with its honesty. And, Ben makes a really cool rabbi. Amen.
Edward Norton makes his directorial debut in a flick about best friends since they were kids, Rabbi Jacob Schram (Ben Stiller) and Father Brian Finn (Norton) as dynamic and popular young men living and working on New York’s Upper West Side. When Anna Reilly (Jenna Elfman), once their childhood and third musketeer friend now grown in a beautiful corporate executive, suddenly returns to the city, she reenters Jake’s and Brian’s lives and hearts with a vengeance. Sparks fly and an unusual and complicated love triangle ensues. Maybe it’s the crowd pleasing young, hot actors, maybe it’s the veteran actors joining in, but whatever it is, it works, in a stylistic version of the age old joke “A priest and a Rabbi walk into a bar..” No pretense, (think Elfman’s character “Dharma” in a movie), yet very predictable plot that somehow enthralls us with its honesty. And, Ben makes a really cool rabbi. Amen.