Over the Brooklyn Bridge

I could not allow my revisit to the cinematic year of 1984 to pass by without watching the only American film directed by Menahem Golan. The prolific Israeli film producer, screenwriter, and director, who, with his cousin Yoram Globus, co-owned The Cannon Group, which specialized in low-to-mid-budget genre pictures, made more movies in the 1980s than any other human. In 1984 alone, Golan & Globus produced and or released Breakin', Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, Missing in Action, Ordeal by Innocence, Bolero, Making the Grade, Sahara, Exterminator 2, Ninja III: The Domination, Sword of the Valiant, and The Naked Face,as well as branching out and taking a risk on prestige, art-house fair, with John Cassavetes' Love Streams, the Cassavetes documentary "I'm Almost Not Crazy ..."—John Cassavetes: The Man and His Work, and this attempt at an R-rated ethnic family romantic comedy.

Golan sure does manage to assemble a terrific cast who attempt to bring life to Arnold Somkin's screenplay, which had the working title of My Darling Shiksa. Forty-seven-year-old Elliott Gould plays thirty-year-old Alby Sherman, a shlubby, diabetic Jewish luncheonette proprietor in Brooklyn who dreams of crossing over to Manhattan to run an upscale restaurant. Since his father died when he was young, the only successful family member he can ask to lend him the $60K he needs to complete the offer he's made on the restaurant is his Uncle Benjamin (Sid Caesar). But Uncle Ben, who treats Alby like a son out of love for his brother, and because his own son is gay, will only give him the money if he breaks up with his shiksa girlfriend. Margaux Hemingway plays Elizabeth Anderson, Alby's sexy model paramore who loves him deeply, even though he's a Jew, she's a gentile, and her Irish Catholic parents (who neither we nor Alby meet). His mother (Shelley Winters) just wants him to be happy, but Ben thinks Alby should marry Cheryl, a mousy little grade-school teacher played by Carol Kane, whom Alby only sees at weddings and bar mitzvahs. After exploring the possibility of borrowing money from the mob by asking his Italian-American friend buddy (Burt Young) to set up a disastrous meeting, Alby goes on a date with Cheryl to see if they would be compatible. It turns out she's a literal "wildcat" when it comes to sex, or at least the idea of sex, but satisfying her is going to require a lot more effort than Alby, who is "just a regular humper," is willing to put in.

For the first twenty-five minutes or so, Over the Brooklyn Bridge plays like a dismissable but serviceable ethnic family comedy, but it quickly becomes tedious and ugly. Based on the quality of comedies his company has put out, we can deduce that Golan's sense of humor is not exactly on par with Niel Simon's or Woody Allen's. And since he grew up in Israel, not Brooklyn, he doesn't demonstrate much affinity for the cultural specificities of the story's milue. Everyone in the movie is the kind of broad ethnic stereotype that comes across as crass rather than endearing. This is especially true of the women characters. Perhaps a skilled comedy director could make the scenes in Carol Kane's apartment funny, but in Golan's hands, they just seem cruel. Over the Brooklyn Bridge plays like Crossing Delancey if everyone in Joan Micklin Silver’s 1988 gem had been played by Sylvia Miles.

The whole thing builds to a long Steadicam shot that, at least in terms of length, rivals Martin Scorsese's celebrated three-minute Copacabana shot from Goodfellas six years later. Except this wobbly four-minute precursor is painfully awkward and amateurish. It starts with Gould walking the streets and follows him into his former apartment, up two the dimly lit flight of stairs on his back, and then into a shower that seems to have been constructed in a makeshift bathroom located in the middle of a living room, where he proposes to the naked, wet Margot Hemingway as the camera does 360° spins around them and the steam fogs up the lens. This shot, like everything else in Over the Brooklyn Bridge, plays like a shoddy feature-length student film made by a wealthy NYC undergrad reaching beyond his capabilities. Nothing about the film—from the available-light location shots in the subway and on the streets of Manhattan to the labored family scenes that go on forever to the cast that feels like many favors were called in by some family member who happens to be friendly with Jewish acting royalty—can escape that tell-tale lack-of-lived-experience vibe that plagues nearly all student films.