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My roommate was just watching this Hallmark special movie entitled Loving Leah that was just on CBS, the basic story is that Leah is married to Benjamin, Benjamin dies so Leah decides to do chalitzah and marry her brother in law – I missed the beginning of the movie but here is a basic review.
Loving Leah was good, not too good, but fairly good and relatively accurate. Loving Leah got some stuff right, the sheitles were hot, Leahs mom was a classic nagging Jewish mother, Leah goes to kiss the mezuza in her new home and there is none, she makes shabbos by herself and she feels really uncomfortable in a mans home. Jake, the guy who has to marry this women is already dating some girl, and the girl eventually breaks up with him and he falls in love with Leah.
The movie was pretty predictable, Leah basically throws off the yoke of her orthodoxy, attends a black tie event in an untznius dress and then gets all hot and heavy with her new husband. Its classic, the language was good, shabbos was actually pronounced as such and not as shabbat.
There were several things which were to be expected Jake can’t figure out what to do because he feels as if he is betraying his brother by shacking up with his widow, so he goes to the local temple, the Rabbanit is wearing a talis – what Rabbis have to wear a talis all the time, whats the deal with wearing it like a scarf? In fact I should do a whole rant on how non-orthodox Jews wear talesim whenever they enter a shul, similar to the women wearing doilies.
I am sure the Jewish news sites will have something about how much of a chillul Hashem Loving Leah was, but I enjoyed this cute love story. The Rabbis at the end were so fake it was pathetic, but the general story line was pretty accurate and its one of those feel good everyone lives happily ever after stories.
I already know that a ton of frummies will be ranting about how horrible Loving Leah was – but it really wasn’t too bad, girl loses husband does chalitzah and falls in love with her new and less religious husband – both make compromises and the modern orthodox movement gains some members.
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'And Mercedes Ruehl." The words strike fear in my heart, especially when they appear in the opening credits of a CBS Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. As a rule, Ruehl doesn't merely dominate her screen time; she wrestles it into submission, word by word, glare by glare.
LOVING LEAH
Starring: Lauren Ambrose, Adam Kaufman, Mercedes Ruehl, Susie Essman, Ricki Lake, Christy Pusz
On: CBS, Channel 4
Time: Tomorrow, 9-11
Couple that with the fact that the cast of "Loving Leah," tomorrow at 9 p.m. on Channel 4, also features Susie Essman and you've got a knockout punch. Essman is the Blagojevich-tongued comedian who puts Larry David in his place on "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and her delivery can be the verbal equivalent of a machine gun. By mid-movie, when Ricki Lake shows up as a reform rabbi, "Loving Leah" is officially one of the more bizarre concoctions to emerge from the Hallmark factory.
But casting is only the start of what's odd about "Loving Leah," which is adapted by P'nenah Goldstein from her own play.
"Loving Leah" is primarily a cute love story between a mousy Hasidic woman in Brooklyn, Leah (Lauren Ambrose), and her urbane cardiologist brother-in-law in Washington, D.C., Jake (Adam Kaufman). That's right, brother-in-law. Leah's rabbi husband dies, and an obscure Jewish law requires her to marry his brother if she has not yet had children.
But Leah and Jake are so different! This is crazy! But it might just work! The movie strains and struggles to get Leah and Jake living platonically in the same Georgetown apartment, so they can follow the conventions of the sham-marriage comedy to the nth degree. While Leah takes classes to prepare for the SATs, so she can go to college and come into her own, Jake halfheartedly continues a love affair with a fellow doctor (Christy Pusz). Leah grows more physically beautiful by the day, especially after she takes off her wig and lets her long red hair flow, and Jake becomes less narcissistic as he sees the beauty of her soul.
Maybe the hokey setup would have been easier to swallow in a quirky independent film, one with a more textured backdrop and knowing tone like "Crossing Delancey." But in a squeaky clean Hallmark movie, the plot is just charmless bunk. Ruehl is out to lunch as Jake's mother, who attends her other son's funeral with nary a tear. Essman has the potential to be convincing, but she is miscast as Ambrose's mother. And Kaufman never gives more than a sitcom-deep performance, which makes Jake's spiritual growth very hard to detect. You have to take it on faith that he's maturing, even while his eyelashes remain so much prettier than Leah's.
I want to say I loved Ambrose, since she was such an essential and appealing part of "Six Feet Under." But as a subservient homemaker trying to get out from under the thumb of her mama, she's all wrong. Once Leah has broken into blossom, Ambrose makes sense. But until then, it's hard to buy her as an oppressed old-world wife lacking in selfhood and modernity, sneaking out to see romantic movies. Nope, can't say I was loving "Leah," or even liking it much.
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