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For me, it's precisely the mushy, unspecific quality of Blumberg's screenplay, and its determined effort not to hurt anybody's feelings, that is most offensive of all. Sure, interfaith romance involving Christians and Jews is still a hot-button topic for some viewers, but please! The '70s sitcom "Bridget Loves Bernie" was way edgier and more honest than this relentlessly polite yet irritatingly soulless film. OK, I'll admit that my personal history may be coloring my reaction just a little; have I told you the story of my third-grade girlfriend, Abby Greenfield, and why her parents took her to Israel? Some other time.

"Keeping the Faith" can muster only a vague and stereotypical impression of what a rabbi's life is like (he is pursued by women) and even less sense of a priest's (he eats in a wood-paneled dining room). The two religions are treated with a benign stupidity that is supposed to signal respect, as if they were adjacent departments in the spirituality mall that sold slightly different brands of the same product and made no serious demands on their adherents. Sure, there are rules: Jake can't marry outside his faith and Brian can't marry at all. But these are just zany complications, in line with the movie's other stale gags: Jewish mothers are pushy, greedy prima donnas. The Irish drink. Jewish daughters are pushy, horny prima donnas. The Irish, um, drink. If the shtick is applied a little thicker to Jews than to Catholics, that's only because Blumberg seems to know nothing whatsoever about Catholic faith and mores.

If either Jake or Brian is actually supposed to have religious faith that sustains them through thick and thin -- the kind of faith that we here in our church have in such abundance, sisters and brothers -- there's no evidence of it. You don't make a movie called "Titanic" without a big-ass ship, and you'd better not make a movie about clergymen without giving us some God. But then, "Keeping the Faith" has no faith in honest storytelling or believable characterization either, and provides absolutely no evidence that golden boy Norton (whose acting in "American History X" and "Fight Club" I've admired greatly) is ready for the director's chair.

Join me in a brief prayer for Catherine Lloyd Burns (as Anna's dippy assistant) and Ken Leung (as a karaoke salesman); their agreeable comic bits are wasted here and they must await their reward in the next movie or the next life. As for Forman, Eli Wallach, Anne Bancroft, Holland Taylor (randy Judge Roberta Kittleson from "The Practice") and the rest of this cast, well, we are all sinners. We must work to forgive and forget. Let the healing begin. In the name of Alan Hale and Hayley Mills and Bronson Pinchot, go in peace. Coffee and Bundt cake in the usual place.
salon.com | April 18, 2000

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