This was pitched as a comedy about a rabbi trying to navigate Argentine tango dancing while adhering to his religious tenets. It's ... not that. There's hardly any dancing, the movie dwells on excessive and unnecessary B-roll footage when time could be spent on better script writing and character development. The film tries to make a bigger point about religious pluralism, but ends up whiffing given that the script writer probably spent 20 minutes on Wikipedia looking up the traditions of each faith. The lack of depth absolutely shows, and the filmmakers try to patch over it by providing elaborate shots of religious ceremonies.
The acting quality wavered from Hallmark movie to high school production - and I'm not even referring to the kids (who were fine). The jokes were dragged out, intolerably so.
So that this isn't a completely negative review, a couple of standouts from this otherwise. I thought Judi Beecher as Raquel, Moshe's wife, acted well, given the material that she had. Her character was the only one with any sort of depth. Karina Smirnoff was also in her element in the dance scenes, although her character suffered from lack of proper development.
This film had a lot of promise but missed the mark completely.
