Funny, refreshing, and heartwarming, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah gives the seminal girlhood film Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. a Gen Z update. Stacy and her friends are constantly on social media and watch each other for potentially politically incorrect terms, but they also struggle with period pain, crushes, and falling out with former friends. It’s a confusing time in a kid’s life, and You Are So Not Invited, like Are You There God? before it, honors that. It never condescends, never strays far from the child’s perspective. It’s jubilant and heartwarming, and (to me at least) it’s always fun to see real-life families play themselves in movies. Judd Apatow experimented with this structure in his semi-autobiographical films Knocked Up and This Is 40, which first gave us a glimpse into his daughter Maude Apatow’s acting prowess. I feel You Are So Not Invited will do the same to its young star Sunny Sandler, whose effortlessly funny and charming performance will surely carve a path for a promising career in the future.
"You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah appreciates that being in middle school means still being a child in most ways, but with a new array of social weaponry with which to be cruel."
— Alison Willmore
"An easily watchable treat for the entire family."
— Samantha Bergeson
Stacy and Lydia are BFFs who've always dreamed about having epic bat mitzvahs. But things start to go comically awry when a popular boy and middle school drama threatens their friendship and their rite of passage.
Fourteen-year-old Stacy Friedman (Sunny Sandler) wants nothing more than to have a grand time at her Bat Mitzah, where she officially comes of age, but problems with friends, boys, and family threaten to derail her plans for the celebration.
At the risk of spoiling it, there is a sublime scene that involves showing a blood-soaked sanitary pad. It might turn off some people, but it’s a vital moment that establishes just how serious the filmmakers are in embracing all parts of girlhood. Granted, it was a quick scene that had other functions besides representation, but I appreciate the willingness to go there and treat it like the normal occurrence that it is.
With Adam Sandler producing this film that stars his two daughters and wife, we now have proof that nepotism can be good, sometimes.
