Film Review: BAD SHABBOS
by Karen Pecota

Daniel Robbins | United States | 2024

Filmmaker Daniel Robbins directs and co-writes a screenplay with Zack Weiner to present a delightfully engaging narrative in BAD SHABBOS. The storyline is hilarious and definitely one for the annals within a Jewish culture; but it’s also relatable to those non-Jewish families who fancy humor, their faith, and identify with the secular world.

Robbins shares, “My grandfather liked to joke that Christians will tell you they’re Christian, Muslims will tell you they’re Muslim, but Jews will tell you they’re Jew-ish. In other words, while one takes their faith seriously, they try to manage the polarities of a secular life and a religious one.” From this idea BAD SHABBOS was born.

The opening scene where two Rabbis are walking the neighborhood and a body drops from above, directly in front of the patriarchs, is absurdly shocking. One gasps, and thinks, “What?”. BAD SHABBOS has the audience hooked as they are forced to put on an investigative-journalism hat to find the answers to who-done-it and why, as the story eloquently unfolds.

A traditional Jewish Friday night Shabbos meal is the setting. The reason is that the Jewish family’s oldest son is engaged to a Protestant woman, and her parents will meet his family for the first time. Perfection is the order of the evening until all hell breaks loose when a dead body is found in the guest bathroom minutes before the guests are to arrive. Yep! An exciting evening you don’t want to miss.

Robbins chooses a personal context to portray and notes, “My family gathered for Shabbos dinner every Friday night and even on the more chaotic nights, there was an underlying warmth.” In addition, his use of the Jewish background is a metaphor of how within the family structure each member is trying to figure out their place, noting that it’s: “Between familial expectations and personal freedoms. Between unconditional love and constructive criticism. Between tradition of the old and tolerance for the new.”

Robbins concludes, “Our team’s first goal with BAD SHABBOS was to make a film that authentically portrays my subculture—New York Jews. Secondly, to take everything we love about the comedies of old and—like the characters in this film—try to adapt to modern times.”

Now, basically, there you have it! A hilarious “old school” comedy, with delightful twists and turns, that is Jew-ish.