A plucky crowd pleaser about the pressure to blow out a bar mitzvah, ’13: The Musical’ begins with young Manhattanite Evan Goldman (Eli Golden) enraged by his parents’ ultimate party mistake. Divorced, they force the boy and his mother (Debra Messing) to move their lives – and his upcoming bash – to his grandmother’s (Rhea Perlman) house in Walkerton, Ind., a town so small that their arrival the number triples. Jewish population. Nevertheless, the social-climbing eighth-grader is determined to pack his dance floor, even if that means tying himself up as a love counselor for the school’s hottest kids (JD McCrary and Lindsey Blackwell) and withdrawing from his first friends (Gabriella Uhl). and Jonathan Lengel) when he discovers they are suckers.
In short, Evan is concerned that his religion will make him an outsider, especially since a classmate, a terribly funny superficial cut played by Frankie McNellis, warns the other students that bar mitzvahs are “where they make you talk backwards and everyone becomes circumcised.” But once the film checks the expected urban versus country grievances over bagels (none), cows (too many), and the unnerving rural silence (“How can anyone sleep with all this silence!”), director Tamra Davis wants to of the film about an inclusive vision of America that quickly soothes all fears of anti-Semitism, as well as most other concerns of adolescence. Screenwriter Robert Horn doesn’t just polish the bully subplots from the book’s 2008 Broadway musical (which he co-wrote with Dan Elish) until Evan no longer has to punch a football jock in the nose—he’s made tensions so underground that certain dramatic plot points make little sense.
Still, Davis is a veteran of showcasing youthful singing talent. (Her previous credits include the Britney Spears vehicle “Crossroads,” the hip-hop cult comedy “CB4,” and the Hanson music video for “MMMBop.”) She and cinematographer Adam Santelli turn the frame into a shoebox diorama for the dynamic cast, who call and dances as they stare straight into the camera. While each image is as bright and colorful as a new box of crayons, the kids themselves never seem artificial, thanks in part to Jamal Sims’ naturalistic yet sharp choreography, which emphasizes stamping and leaning and leggy strides.
The songs, by Jason Robert Brown, aren’t bad either, especially a bluesy song sung by the soccer team (“Bad News”), a catty rock ballad backed by a marching band (“Opportunity”), and a new on-screen, finger-snapping charmer. where Evan tempts his classmates to sneak into an R-rated horror movie (“The Bloodmaster”) – a gory film that traumatizes him and the class far more than anything else that happens on screen.
13: The Musical
Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
