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Starved for Affection

By Tricia Olszewski
Washington City Paper | May 4, 2006
Every family suffers its own degree of dysfunction. And of course, suitcases aren’t the only kind of baggage that’s dragged in when the kids return home. But c’mon, does anybody actually have holiday dinners as epically bad as the ones in Hollywood movies? First-time writer-director Salvador Litvak’s When Do We Eat? doesn’t begin auspiciously, even for a completely unrealistic seasonal comedy: It’s Passover, and Mom (Lesley Ann Warren) turns to the family phone tree because she needs a couple of boxes of matzoh. This is Litvak and co-writer Nina Davidovich’s lazy way of introducing the family, and what a group it is: There’s the angry father (Michael Lerner), the druggie son (Ben Feldman), the sex-therapist daughter (Shiri Appleby), the lesbian daughter from Dad’s prior marriage (Meredith Scott Lynn), and the lesbian daughter’s African-American girlfriend (Cynda Williams), who wears a yarmulke tilted toward her forehead like a sassy hat. Already at home are the autistic son (Adam Lamberg) and the kvetching grandpa (Jack Klugman). And before these 86 minutes are out, we’ll also meet the Hasidic son (Max Greenfield), the celebrity-publicist cousin (Mili Avital), and—I swear—a crazed-looking, eye-patch-wearing bald guy (Mark Ivanir) who sets up the tent for the Seder and is invited to stay. The plot, really, is little more than all of these irritating people yelling at one another around the table until the druggie son drops a tab of E into the angry father’s antacid because, well, he’s a jerk. And because the patriarch is determined to hold “the world’s fastest Seder.” Dad starts tripping, which consists of seeing the dinner table fly through the sky and images move around the Haggada, while the rest of the family, sigh, still argues. There is, to be fair, a genuinely touching moment when the kvetching grandpa mentions the wife and children he lost during the Holocaust, as well as a decent joke or two. (Here’s one: After his tragic story, Grandpa rebuffs his son with “I don’t need a drug hug!”) But Litvak and Davidovich then throw in a couple of unnecessary, implausible twists—y’know, in case anyone needed more time to figure out that “completely unrealistic” part. World’s fastest Seder? You wish.
Tags: Salvador Litvak, When Do We Eat?

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