Opening Night for the 20th Boston Jewish Film Festival

This forms a large part of the film's metanarrative. The Deal consistently plays with the idea of a Jewish joke, or rather the appearance of a Jewish joke. The movie begins with the voiceover, "A Rabbi, producer, and studio executive walk into a bar..." leaving the rest of the joke (if there ever was one) unsaid. Later, the voiceover is emended to "A Rabbi, Producer, and a recently converted black action star walk into a bar..." and the rest of the joke is more or less the events unfolding on screen. Macy's character's actions are so unbelievable that they could only exist in the world of a joke, in a world supposedly without consequences.

There's nothing terribly novel about this premise. In Portnoy's Complaint, the titular Portnoy compains, "Doctor Spielvogel, this is my life, my only life, and I'm living it in the middle of a Jewish joke! I am the son in the Jewish joke--only it ain't no joke!" Unfortunately for The Deal, the premise isn't terribly well executed as most of the jokes skewer Hollywood rather than Judaism, and the movie certainly isn't as funny as Portnoy (though this isn't a surprising result in a movie about superficiality).

But at one point in The Deal, the producer seems to inhabit a Jewish joke, the kind found in the canonical Big Book of Jewish Humor. Macy's producer says to the scheming studio executive (Meg Ryan), "Your idea is sick." She replies that she "just took a page out of your book," to which Macy quips, "Oh, so now MY book is sick!" It's probably the sharpest exchange in the whole movie, and the moment when the movie reflects a Jewish sensibility rather than simply concerning itself with Jewish themes.

Sadly, the movie seldom rises to these heights. Telegraphing one of the movie's major themes, it continues to set events in motion without ever resolving anything. Worse, the film is content with leaving the main character ill-defined, a figure in a joke rather than a formed character with pathos. At times, the movie also falls into the trap of becoming what it parodies, variously an action movie, a second-rate drama, and the work of a director who takes himself too seriously. As far as Hollywood satires go, it hardly matches the levels of Tropic Thunder, not exactly the paragon of the genre.

It's not hard to understand what attracted the curators to the film, and it's an intellectually interesting choice to open the festival. Unfortunately, it's also one of the least impressive films in the program.