Keeping Up with the Steins: Critic Reviews

Keeping Up With the Steins turns into a recipe to forget: chopped liver with 'heart.'

Keeping Up With the Steins begins as a growling, razor-toothed satire of carnivorous consumption in Hollywood. But after the first half-hour, those growls subside into whimpers.

Blends humor with heart for a satisfying, if predictable, experience.

[Zakarin] keeps things clearly flat and primary, and the characters never become more than stereotype.

Warm, witty, and sitcom-obvious -- a genuine audience pleaser that's built to wring laughs of pained recognition from anyone who has survived a bar mitzvah as either a participant or an observer.

The cast is uniformly charming, while the script both promotes family values and tweaks stereotypes in the gentlest ways.

A winningly sincere and warmly humorous film about an ancient Jewish milestone in the time of Martha Stewart.

An adept cast that resists stereotyping keeps the plot humming.

By the time the Fiedlers are getting serious about their arguments and their hugs, we've grown to like them.

A fresh and lovable comedy about a dysfunctional Jewish family planning their son's bar mitzvah.

A tweener in every respect: It hasn't the nerve to offend anyone, yet it hasn't the flavor of warm-hearted comfort food.

Despite problems of tone and tempo, Steins is appealingly cast.

It's not the kind of comedy that makes you laugh till your face hurts, but it'll give your smile muscles a good workout.

The specificity of the indulged lives in this film is delivered so ineptly that it seems as if rich kids have been shooting home movies in their own back yards. Which may be the case.

Comes off like a collection of TV actors doing somebody a favor.

A sure-fire audience-pleaser.

A sitcom with enough big laughs and emotional truth to get audiences past awkward pacing and some slow spots.

It's not meant to be uproarious. But even as comfort food, Steins can't keep up.

Had Scott Marshall and screenwriter Mark Zakarin honed their knives sharper, they could have made genuine mirth out of this.

Shooting a comedy, like telling a joke, demands a sense of rhythm, and Scott is no dancer -- he keeps tripping against the grain of the humour.

While Marshall opted to pass up something dry and acidic in favor of a big bottle of Manischewitz, his movie is not without its pleasant charms, thanks to an energetic cast that manages to keep up with Marshall's highly amusing dad, Garry.

Pleasant little comedy with some good performances.