Middle-aged Jason Schwartzman is a hard pill to swallow. Jason Schwarzman can’t be middle-aged. Can he? He was just a kid in Rushmore; was that so long ago? Yes. Yes, it was. Jason Schwartzman is now old enough to have a dadbod and a mid-life crisis, both fully on display in today’s film, Between the Temples.
Ben Gottlieb (Schwartzman) is a cantor who can’t sing. That’s a problem. I mean, if the entirety of your job is standing at a dais during a service and singing the Torah, and you no longer sing, well, that’s an issue, no? Following the sudden death of his wife, Ben moved back in with his moms. The movie opens with them surprising him with a blind date. [Not only was the date a complete surprise, but it was prefaced as “would you like to see a doctor?” which all of us interpreted as Ben’s moms pushing him to a therapist. This film is a comedy, although rarely a laugh-out-loud comedy.]
The latest non-singing episode has Ben lying in the middle of the road at night, which may-or-may-not be a serious suicide attempt. The semi that flat-out refuses to run him over ends up driving Ben home. This is that kind of movie. Seeking solace in a bottle, Ben finds a bar, gets into a brief bar fight, and is helped off the floor by former teacher Carla O’Connor (Carol Kane, of whom I have not heard a thing since Scrooged).
The next day, Carla shows up at Ben’s bar mitzvah/bat mitzvah tutorial class insisting that she -a 72-year-old woman- would like a bat mitzvah.
Sure. Why not?
And this is the film: Ben slowly picking up the pieces of his broken life while 
devoting a great deal of attention to the world’s oldest coming-of-age Jew. OK, this sounds mildly amusing. Is it? Well … sorta. Between the temples can be dull, and the film quality is godawful poor, but it did have some moments, like when Ben catches a blind date lying about her religion, confessing she chose jdate because, “I hate the way foreskin feels.”
If that doesn’t raise a smile, this is certainly not your film.
I enjoyed the seder dinner denouement enough to want to text about it, but even so I found it quite impossible to describe exactly how funny I found the awkwardness in words alone. You kind of have to see the picture to enjoy the moment, which, I daresay, is classic Jason Schwartzman. Is that enough to recommend the picture? Perhaps if you are of Jewish persuasion and/or an ally. Otherwise, there are better midlife crisis films, and some might even have been shot with an audience in mind.
There was once a widower named Ben
Who moved back with parents, again
He lacked faith in his path
And in the aftermath
He found solace in a septuagenarian
Rated R, 93 Minutes
Director: Nathan Silver
Writer: Nathan Silver, C. Mason Wells
Genre: Kosher films
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: The Jewish curious
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Many of us are not terribly interested in Jewish culture or midlife crises. If this describes you, look elsewhere.
