Stream It Or Skip It: ‘13: The Musical’ on Netflix, a Wafer-Thin Whiff of a Broadway Adaptation About a Jewish Boy’s Bar Mitzvah

Netflix’s 13: The Musical adapts a Broadway production that’s notable less for its popularity (it ran for a measly 105 shows in 2008-09), more for being the first professional music gig for pop star Ariana Grande, who has nothing to do with this movie, so don’t get excited. Behind the camera is Tamra Davis, director of Crossroads (!), Half-Baked (!!) and more recently and relevantly, a few episodes of High School Musical: The Musical – The Series. In front of it is a young, relatively unknown cast bolstered by the likes of Debra Messing and Rhea Perlman. Will this story of a Jewish kid on the cusp of manhood be a better bar mitzvah saga than Cha Cha Real Smooth? I have my doubts.

13: THE MUSICAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Twelve-year-old Evan Goldman (Eli Golden) is rehearsing for his bar mitzvah, and he’s doing the opposite of killing it. His rabbi (Josh Peck) answers his phone: “It’s god, he wants his language back.” See, Evan’s brain just ain’t in the game. His parents are splitsville. And now he and his mom (Debra Messing) are moving from bustling and vibrant New York City to Borington, Indiana to live with Grandma (Rhea Perlman). He sings and dances one last time on the metropolitan streets before they hop in the car so he can sing and dance in front of cows in pastures. And now, his bar mitzvah will have to take place in a Christian church because there’s no synagogue in these here parts, and the party will be in Grandma’s backyard – she even has a boombox he can use! Evan’s assessment of all this is, “My dad has a midlife crisis, and I get Middle America.”

Evan meets the neighbor girl, Patrice (Gabriella Uhl), and they’re fast friends. She shows him around town, singing a number called “The Lamest Place in the World,” and we soon sense a one-way unrequited crush starting with her and apparently dropping dead before Evan gets a clue. She thinks they’re gonna be supertight pals when school starts, but he’s on a quest to make a lot of friends so he can have a fly-ass baller of a bar mitzvah. This means sidling up to the popular kids and meddling in their love triangle: Brett (JD McCrary) and Kendra (Lindsey Blackwell) are all mushy-goo for each other, but Lucy (Frankie McNellis) was hoping to snare Brett in her love net, and all this endangers Kendra and Lucy’s best-friendship. This is more detail than you need, but for the love of Pete, the movie gives it to us whether we want it or not, and trust me, we do not want it.

Patrice doesn’t fit into any of this. She’s one of the school misfits. Compare her to Lucy, who’s pushy and manipulative and powerful, not in a Heathers kind of way, or an Election kind of way, but more of a nonviolent and ultimately forgivable Disney Channel antagonist kind of way. Evan concocts a stupid-ass plan to engineer the perfect setting for Kendra and Brett to share their first magical kiss (they’ll sneak into a chainsaw horror movie). Lucy isn’t happy about this, and has enough sway around here, she can render bar mitzvah attendance robust or nonexistent – so Evan better stop that kiss from happening, OR ELSE. At this point, we’re feeling sorry for Patrice, because she’s such a nice kid and Evan is so concerned about his stupid party, he doesn’t realize he’s alienating a genuine friend. Then again, she tried to make him choose a side in the school popularity divide, and that ain’t fair. Twelve- and 13-year-olds: they can all be dumb jerks sometimes, can’t they? But that’s what COMING OF AGE is all about, isn’t it?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This is just The Junior High School Musical. With a slight Keeping Up With the Steins angle.

Performance Worth Watching: Oh man. Everyone has to take a turn jumping into this movie’s cornball meat grinder. McCrary (of Tyler Perry TV series The Paynes) shows some smoove dance moves, so let’s give this honor to him.

Memorable Dialogue: Stupid smalltown yokels don’t know their Judaism:

Random kid at school: What’s a Bar Mitzvah?

Lucy: It’s this Jewish thing where they make you talk backwards and everyone gets circumcised!

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: 13: The Musical is some flimsy, flimsy shit. And annoying. Annoying, annoying shit. I understand it’s aimed at the Disney Channel demographic and needn’t allow harsh realities into its bubble to spoil all the fun. But for a story about a kid on the cusp of a major personal and cultural rite-of-passage, a kid who’s already complex social and emotional life is further complicated by divorce and relocation and New Kid Syndrome and all that, this movie is rather remarkably about none of this stuff. For minutes and minutes at a time, it forgets about its protagonist and his Interesting Friend, Patrice, so all the attractive kids in school can sing and dance about how they want to lip-mash with each other. If it were any more shallow, it would be an inhalation in the vacuum of space.

But, you may ask, what about the music. I’ll tell you everything I remember about it: It was uptempo, earnest and frequent. Its finer details – say, a catchy hook, clever lyric or distinguishing characteristic – are much more slippery to the memory. The music definitely happened, and everyone performing it seemed happy, their mouths matching the words being sung without quite syncing up with the passion; belting it out never seemed so physically effortless.

The plot is worthy of half a sitcom, with a subplot about Evan’s mom’s adjustment to her new life haphazardly sprinkled in – she decided to finally start writing again, so good for her, but how about a job? What kind of work did she do before? Who is she, anyway, besides a cardboard placeholder in this plot? As for that, who is Evan? What are his interests? He likes New York. He’s excited about his bar mitzvah. Any interests? Quirks? Insecurities? Recognizable human characteristics? Does he even like to sing, or is the movie forcing him to do so? So many questions. So, so many questions to fire into the void.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Coming of age? More like coming of RAGE!

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Stream 13: The Musical on Netflix