BAD SHABBOS

Name: BAD SHABBOS
Item: BAD SHABBOS
Author: Review

"A Teenage Prank Goes Terribly Wrong"

Family Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

BAD SHABBOS follows a Jewish family for a hilarious night of surprises when the adult son and his Catholic girlfriend have their parents meet for the first time over a Friday Sabbath dinner. An accidental death occurs during an ill-timed prank by the family’s rebellious teenage son. This forces the Jewish family to work together to come up with a solution before the Christian in-laws arrive. With plenty of diverse characters in the mix, there’s never a dull moment in BAD SHABBOS.

The comedy in BAD SHABBOS is fast paced and entertaining, and filmed with impressive production values. The movie has a light moral, pro-family worldview. The biblical story of Joseph from Genesis is even told at the end to show how people can be “angels of kindness” in other people’s lives. However, it’s discussed in a storytelling aspect rather than in a biblical context. The family’s Jewish beliefs create some comical moments, but it doesn’t drive the story. Sadly, however, BAD SHABBOS has about 36 obscenities and profanities. Also, the story’s plot problem is resolved by using a fake suicide note.

Content:

(B, PaPa, LLL, V, S, A, DD, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Light moral pro-family worldview stressing kindness and love toward other people plus promoting family working together, but this is marred by some immoral behavior, such as selfishness, lying, dishonesty, and covering up an embarrassing accidental death with a fake suicide note;

Foul Language:

16 “s” words, one “b” word, one “f” word, eight other obscene words, 10 profanities using God’s name in vain, passing gas noises are heard, and human feces accidentally set smeared on a white bathroom rug;

Violence:

Light violence includes a dead body falls from the top of an apartment, and a man accidentally hits his head on the bathroom sink, which kills him.

Sex:

At the beginning of the movie a man gazes at the bottom of an engaged woman and makes a comment to his girlfriend on his conversation with her father about oral fixation, plus it’s revealed that a woman’s dead boyfriend has been cheating on her;

Nudity:

No explicit nudity, but a woman’s younger brother walks around with no pants in one scene (nothing explicit shown) and a man begins to pull down his pants in anther scene;

Alcohol Use:

Some social drinking at a dinner party;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

An engaged woman shares a smoking vape with a man who’s not her fiancé, but no illicit drugs, although there are prescription pills and laxative on the dresser of a woman’s precocious younger brother, and the younger brother mixes laxatives in his sister’s boyfriend’s drink, which causes a fatal accident;

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Some lying about a dead body, disobedience to tradition and family, young son can be rebellious and talk back to his parents, and there’s some light religious humor about over-emphasizing Jewish customs and a light attack on Mormonism.

More Detail:

BAD SHABBOS follows a Jewish family for a hilarious night of surprises when interfaith engaged couple, David and Meg, have their parents meet for the first time over a Friday Sabbath dinner, or Shabbos. When an accidental death occurs, the Jewish family is forced to work together to come up with a solution before the Catholic in-laws arrive. With diverse characters like a religiously worried mother, an antsy teenage son, and a daughter-in-law who just doesn’t fit, there’s never a dull moment.

The movie begins when two men taking an evening walk have a dead body fall at their feet from the apartment above. The introduction then takes viewers to the beginning of the night when the engaged couple, David and his Catholic girlfriend, Meg, arrive at David’s family home for Shabbos. Soon afterward, David’s sister, Abby, and her boyfriend, Ben, arrive. By Ben’s comments and Meg’s disdain, Abby and Ben clearly are not an ideal couple. Also, David and Abby’s younger brother, Adam, who still lives at home, has always despised Ben for Ben’s degrading comments toward him.

As the family visits and waits for Meg’s parents to arrive, Adam plays a prank on Ben that proves to be fatal. One by one the family learns of the fatal accident and must find a solution before Meg’s parents arrive. From getting the doorman involved, putting bread on the body to continue to honor Shabbat traditions, and having to keep calm when the in-laws arrive sooner than hoped, the night turns into comical chaos. Eventually, though, the family learns how to work together, accept each other, and be “angels of kindness” in each other’s lives. However, how will they deal with the dead body?

BAD SHABBOS has won several independent film festival audience-choice awards. So, the movie is undoubtedly fresh and funny. The characters are classic ones ripe for comedic exaggerations to which and from which viewers can relate and learn. Not missing a beat, the story is fast paced and surprising. The location and set design for the family’s apartment make the audience feel like they’re really peeking into the family’s lives. The filmmakers seamlessly insert several sound effects throughout the movie. The movie’s music soundtrack helps build the characters and story.

BAD SHABBOS supports a light moral worldview promoting kindness, love, reconciliation, family, and self-realization of one’s character flaws. Though the story’s set around a Jewish family, it could have been told through any people group with the same outcomes. Other than the foul language, the movie’s biggest moral problem is that the family escapes a police inquiry by having a fake suicide note slipped into the dead man’s pocket before having his body thrown out a window. BAD SHABBOS also contains some miscellaneous immoral behavior such as lying, dishonesty and teenage disobedience.

MOVIEGUIDE® rates the movie excessive and unacceptable because of the fake suicide note and the foul language.