Keeping Up with the Steins

What’s the Story?

Young Benjamin Fiedler (Daryl Sabara) worries that he'll make a mistake during his upcoming bar mitzvah, unaware that his father, Adam (Jeremy Piven), is still haunted by the mistake he made at his own bar mitzvah. When the Fiedler's neighbors, the Steins, decide to throw a bigger-than-life celebration for their son, Adam plots his son's ceremony so as to outdo his neighbor. Meanwhile, Benji decides he can't handle the pressure and decides to create a diversion at his bar mitzvah by inviting his estranged grandfather Irwin, whose abandonment of his son and wife Rose (Doris Roberts) left Adam seething with resentment. Now living on an Indian reservation with girlfriend Sacred Feather (Daryl Hannah), Grandpa is full of remorse, advice, and energetic attention for Benji, exactly what neurotic Adam can't manage. Benji begins to see his father in a new light, flawed and sometimes menacing, yes, but also as a son himself, disappointed and unable to move on. Irwin, in turn, learns the value of family even in the face of stress and compromise, the conditions he was unable to face as a young man.

Is It Any Good?

KEEPING UP WITH THE STEINS is both broad and affectionate, wielding stereotypes like blunt force instruments. Yes, all the Fiedler boys have lessons to learn, including forgiveness, flexibility, and the meaning of the Haftarah. The women who tend to them play equally conventional parts, though they are considerably less annoying. Sacred Feather, Rose, and Benji's mom Joanne (Jamie Gertz) affect predictable, sweet, long-suffering poses. You only wish they were allowed more movement -- at least as much as those antic boys.