“13: The Musical” is an ebullient crowd pleaser about the pressures of wearing a frenzied bar mitzvah, as young Manhattanite Evan Goldman (Eli Golden) rages on his parents’ ultimate party foul. It starts with what you do. They divorced and the boy and his mother (Debra Messing) were forced to move into his grandmother’s (Rhea Perlman) home in Walkerton, Indiana. Jewish population. Nonetheless, his sociable climbing eighth grade involved himself as a love advisor to some of the school’s most popular kids (JD McCrary and Lindsey Blackwell) and his first friends (Gabriella Uhl and Jonathan). Länger) when he discovers they are idiots.
In short, Evan worries that his religion makes him an outsider. In particular, one classmate, a terrifyingly funny shallow twang played by Frankie McNelis, warns other students that the bar mitzvah is “a place where they make you speak backwards and get everyone circumcised.” But after the film checks out the expected city-versus-country grievances about bagels (none), cows (too many), and unsettling countryside silence (“I can’t sleep in such silence!”), Director Tamra Davis tells us that the film’s young viewers talk about an overarching vision of America that quickly assuages most of their anti-Semitic anxieties and other adolescent anxieties. Screenwriter Robert Horn not only reinforces the bullying subplot in his 2008 Broadway book of musicals (co-written with Dan Elish), but it goes on until Evan doesn’t have to punch a football player in the nose. Dramatic plot points make little sense.
Still, Davis is a veteran who showcases his youthful singing talent. (Her previous credits include Britney her Spears ride ‘Crossroads’, hip-hop her cult her comedy ‘CB4’, Hanson’s music video for “MMMBop”.) She and cinematographer Adam Santelli turn the frame into a shoebox diorama for a dynamic cast that belts out and dances while looking directly at the camera. Every image is bright and colorful like a new box of crayons, but the kids themselves never look artificial, thanks to Jamal Sims’ naturalistic yet crisp choreography.
The Jason Robert Brown song isn’t bad either. Especially a bluesy number sung by a football team (“Bad News”), a feline rock ballad backed by a marching band (“Opportunity”), and a new Evan seducing his classmates into an R-rated horror movie (“Bad News”). “Bloodmaster”), a harrowing movie that hurts him and the class more than anything else happening onscreen.
13: The Musical
Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. watch on netflix.