Review: West Bank Story

Riddle: What do you get when you mix watered down polit­i­cal gen­er­al­iza­tions with poor musi­cal rewrites of a Broadway/Hollywood main­stay?
Answer: An Academy Award!

There was a small part of me that jumped for joy when Ari Sandel went to receive his Live Action short Subject Oscar® ear­lier this year. After all, I have been a firm believer in the Jewish Renaissance of cin­ema that has been brew­ing through the first decade of this cen­tury (see Jonathan Kesselman’s “The Hebrew Hammer”). And hell, who wouldn’t want to take on the over­ar­ch­ing issues through a lit­tle bit of tried and true com­edy. But, hav­ing finally watched Sandel’s “West Bank Story” ear­lier today, it became alarm­ingly obvi­ous how inept we are as a com­mu­nity to take on real world issues through com­edy (except of course, for David Yates’ “The Girl in the Cafe”).

A par­ody of “West Side Story”, the short film’s plot cen­ters around two rival falafel stands, one Israeli and one Palestinian. When one sol­dier, Ari, who has some unex­plained alle­giance to the Israeli stand (no, love for coun­try­men will not suf­fice in my book), and the lone woman in the piece, Fatima, the Palestinian beu­aty who runs the counter at Hummus Hut, fall in love, all hilar­ity (read: snooz­ers) breaks loose. Oy! The Israelis want to build a wall. Allah Akbar! The Palestinians build Molotov cock­tails. In between all of this bum­bling there are a few poorly writ­ten songs. My gauge for how bad a musi­cal really is is when I can guess the lyrics more than five sec­onds before they’re actu­ally said. Where the music should move the story for­ward (even in a spoof kids) it sim­ply wastes time in this lan­gor­ous 21 minute heap of tehina.

In the end of course, the two sides real­ize their dif­fer­ences and come together, and even note that oth­ers should fol­low their lead. They work together to rebuild the destroyed falafel stands, and their cus­tomers even come together in peace and har­mony. I want to be clear that my issue is not with the real­ity or lack-thereof in the film. My prob­lem more is with the fact that it’s just not funny. Sandel came up with the per­fect setup for a high-concept spoof. There is so much room for this to be hilar­i­ous, but he held back too much. The fun­ni­est moments in the piece end up not going any­where, like when an Israeli check­point guard con­fuses the word Hummus for Hamas, or the Palestinian falafel cook tosses a rock into the Israeli falafel machine. There is poten­tial here, but none of it is realized.

So how can a film like this take home the AMPAS’s top honor in its for­mat? Like I said, it’s watered-down polit­i­cal views make it incred­i­bly safe and it’s musi­cal legacy makes it adorably famil­iar. So enjoy your suc­cesses Ari Sandel. It appears you haven’t made a movie in two years any­way, and there’s noth­ing on the slate. Here here to awards!