Smart, funny and touching, and there is enjoyable chemistry between the three leads.
Keeping the Faith (2000)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:113
Fresh:77
Rotten:36
Average Rating:6.2/10
Consensus: Norton's steady hand delivers a comedy filled with clever humor and enlightened performances.
Runtime: 2 hrs 9 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: In actor Edward Norton's directorial debut, Brian (Norton), a priest, and his best friend, Jake (Ben Stiller), a rabbi, both fall in love with their long-lost childhood friend, Anna (Jenna Elfman),... In actor Edward Norton's directorial debut, Brian (Norton), a priest, and his best friend, Jake (Ben Stiller), a rabbi, both fall in love with their long-lost childhood friend, Anna (Jenna Elfman), who has returned to Manhattan to pursue her hectic business career. However, Brian has taken a vow of celibacy, and Jake is constantly being set up by Jewish mothers in his temple. The workaholic Anna isn't Jewish, but this doesn't stop her from returning Jake's affection and beginning a relationship that they hide from Brian. As their relationship progresses, complications arise, leading Jake, Brian, and Anna to deal with questions of both religious and romantic faith. As Rabbi Jake, Stiller once again displays his excellent comic timing, and his scenes with Elfman, Norton, and Anne Bancroft (as Jake's traditional Jewish mother) carry KEEPING THE FAITH. Set in lushly filmed New York City, Norton's film exhudes an innocent charm that's sure to please audiences of all denominations. [More]
Starring: Ben Stiller, Jenna Elfman, Edward Norton, Anne Bancroft
Starring: Ben Stiller, Jenna Elfman, Edward Norton, Anne Bancroft, Milos Forman, Eli Wallach, Ron Rifkin, Rena Sofer, Holland Taylor, Ken Leung, Kryss Anderson
Director: Edward Norton
Director: Edward Norton
Screenwriter: Stuart Blumberg
Producer: Edward Norton, Howard W. "Hawk" Koch, Stuart Blumberg
Composer: Elmer Bernstein
Reviews for Keeping the Faith
Unevenly paced, wildly unfunny and patently boring, Keeping the Faith is a waste of talent and time.
A contrived script and lackluster performances are the worst sins of this uninspired comedy.
A worst-case scenario of what happens when an actor turns director. Norton loves his fellow actors so much he cannot bear to reduce their scenes. So stuff that shouldn’t make the cut of even the special edition DVD stays in the film.
It's as soft and squishy as anything by Nora Ephron or pre-caustic Woody Allen.
The first film in years to present two servants of God as ardent, idealistic, hard-working, and interesting people.
Certainly more interesting than your standard romantic comedy, yet it is, first and foremost, a Hollywood product, and that necessitates a certain amount of distance from anything that might really make the audience think.
All denominations should enjoy this fun tale of religious, comic de-pray-vity.
Keeping the Faith's hipness is limited to a couple of one-liners. Its exploration of faith and love is skin deep.
[A] pallid, witless comedy of interfaith romance which would have seemed embarrassingly weak as a Borscht Belt resort skit in 1959.
doesn't have an ounce of pretension to being more than a crowd-pleasing, light entertainment...it turns out to be an amiable lark.
Everything seems too glossy, crises are resolved too easily, situations seem pat.
Registers a strong directorial debut for Norton, with no worries about overemphasis on his own performance.
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