Review by Jennifer Pflughaupt

“Keeping Up With the Steins”, directed by ScottMarshall and starring a slew of familiar faces such as Jamie Gertz, Jeremy Piven, and Larry Miller, was asevere disappointment to what could’ve been an incredibly funny flick.

Every Jewish boy’s life leads to the inevitable day that he becomes a strapping, young man. For the
Fiedler family, the celebration of manhood has become a survival of the Yiddish… oops, I mean fittest. The Steins’ son, Zachary, has just had the Bar mitzvah of all Bar mitzvahs. The party was themed “Titanic” with look-alikes, fake ice bergs and somehow a 50cent wannabe has crept into this sinking boat to rap a happy Bar mitzvah. Of course, the Fiedlers cannot be out done. So, the party becomes about how to outdo the Steins instead of celebrating the joyous occasion of manhood. Along the journey to Testosterone Blvd., there is a disconnect in the family and a feud between all the Fiedler men. From there, this film takes a turn and hits Anticlimactic Street and the
testosterone can be measured with a teaspoon.

Keeping Up had great potential to being a hilarious film, but instead it became a formula comedy with no originality whatsoever. It just was not funny. It wasn’t even good for that matter. I lived up to the slogan for The Mungles on Movies… “We watch crap so you don’t have to”. I give it a generous 1 and ½ oy feh’s.

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Jennifer is a freelance film critic with an overloaded life. She has a rock star husband, a 2 year old daughter, a military career in the U.S. Air Force Reserves, and she is also a full time student at UNT working towards getting her degree in kicking butt and taking names. Some of her favorite films are "Heart of the Game", "The Lords of Dogtown", "American History X", "The Boondock Saints", "Miss Congeniality", "The United States of Leland" , "Return to Me" and "Thank You for Smoking". You can check out her personal information, plus read her writings and reviews on Myspace .