Review of You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, directed by Sammi Cohen

I will admit, a movie like this typically is not my alley at all. YA movies and literature tend to never go well with me because of how they have a tendency to play into tropes that I don’t care for, and the writing usually isn’t the best.

Considering I am now approaching the age that these films are geared towards, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people I am surrounded by just suddenly end up watching this kind of content constantly. I’m already seeing it with my sisters, who read a ton of YA style and adjacent books despite being older than me.

All of this said, I ended up watching this as background noise for while I was doing work some day, and somehow I ended up abandoning the work and watching the movie completely after the first ten minutes.

To be clear, I am someone who shamelessly turns off movies if I cannot get into them by the first fifteen minutes, and why I wouldn’t say this movie was super compelling, it was still a lot of fun—and full of tropes.

That said, here’s my review of the film!

Two best friends start a massive fight right before their bat mitzvahs.

Our protagonist in this film is Stacy, who is preparing for bat mitzvah. Like so many other teenage girls her age, she has all these expectations and wants when it comes to her perfect night, although her parents might shut her down because some of the things (like hiring Olivia Rodrigo to perform) are definitely out of their budget.

Stacy’s best friend is Lydia, who is also gearing up to have hers as well, and the two of them are thick as thieves.

They know that Stacy has a crush on a boy named Andy in their class, but this is going to cause problems later on. Stacy also has her period, which is going to be a problem later on. Lydia has more potential to be popular of the two, and when she’s invited to a popular girl’s house, that’s the beginning of the end.

She brings Stacy, and they all end up going to a diving section of a cliff. The students are all talking about how whoever would jump that is going to die, and Stacy sees this as an opportunity.

So she tells everyone she is going to jump, then does it. First everyone is going to talk about how cool she is, but then her bloody pad comes out of her pants and floats to the surface, making her humiliated.

She ends up blaming Lydia lowkey for what has happened, as Lydia laughs as the group, especially Andy, makes fun of her in the moment. Stacy confronts Lydia angrily, and decides that her crush on Andy is dead, forcing Lydia to call its time of death.

But when school arrives, Stacy is shocked to discover that Lydia and Andy are now dating. This makes her even more angry, and she spreads rumors about Lydia and angrily makes a terrible video compiling all of Lydia’s worst moments.

She wants to make this the entrance video for Lydia’s bat mitzvah, but decides against it in the end. But, because this is a movie about drama, that’s not the end of this video.

At the same time, Stacy begins volunteering at a senior living because of how she learns Andy’s grandmother is there, and he is forced to visit her every weekend.

She disguises this as her bat mitzvah project for volunteering, but when her teacher finds out the two of them are kissing in a holy room, she ends up realizing that Stacy is doing the volunteering for nefarious reasons—also, one of the old ladies snitched on her. Lydia’s mother comes to the house for the video, and Lydia’s mother gives it to her.

At Lydia’s bat mitzvah, the two seem to make up, but then it’s ruined when the video plays. Lydia is obviously angry at Stacy even more for what she has accidentally done, and then their relationship hits a new low.

But with the help of the parents, Stacy confesses all of her sins at her synagogue session, then her parents help make it up to them by merging their bat mitzvahs, like it should’ve been in the first place if we’re going to be honest.

Overall Thoughts

It’s a cute movie, but it ends up being pretty full of cliches. I thought that it was really good for representation because it shows how many different kinds of people could be Jewish.

There are a diverse amount of people in this cast portraying Jewish characters, and I think it’s important to note for a lot of people that who is quote on quote expected to be Jewish visibly might not actually be Jewish, and vice versa.

There’s no one size fits all. But besides that, this is a pretty generic story, but it was still quite a bit of fun. I wouldn’t rewatch it, but I wouldn’t be sad I watched it.

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