Netflix’s new Adam Sandler movie is a family affair. In You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, which Sandler co-stars in and executive-produced, his daughter Sunny sits at the center of the film as Stacy, a 12-going-on-13-year-old whose current animating force in life, as the film opens, is her impending bat mitzvah. Underscored by a power point she proudly presents to her family in their living room, Stacy envisions a blowout: a party of the century-style spectacular on top of a private yacht gliding across the Hudson River with appearances from Olivia Rodrigo and end-of-the-night fireworks. That, naturally, gets eye-rolled at by her older sister (played by Sunny’s actual sibling, Sadie) and shut down by her middle-class parents (Adam Sandler and Idina Menzel). It’ll be the first of many disappointments Stacy will face in a movie where next to nothing will go her way.
Those will include a dare at a party she’d hoped would win over the respect of her peers going embarrassingly awry; her crush, a floppy-haired boy who speaks in slow motion, having feelings for someone else. But nothing will be more disappointing in You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah than the direction Stacy’s friendship with her longtime bestie, Lydia (Samantha Lorraine), will go. After that failed dare, which Stacy feels Lydia didn’t have enough of her back for, it’s misunderstanding after misunderstanding that turns this onetime inseparable pair into rivals. Stacy at first is certain there’s no future with Lydia in it; then the movie becomes as much about whether Stacy will get the bat mitzvah of her dreams as whether she’ll be able to patch things up with the friend she grows to miss a lot.
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