Running time: 129 minutes
Starring: Ben Stiller, Edward Norton, Jenna Elfman, Anne Bancroft, Eli Wallach, Ron Rifkin, Milos Forman
Rating 6 out of 10
Harking back to the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, Keeping The Faith is an instantly appealing tale of love and rivalry among the pews andpulpits.
Jake Schram (Ben Stiller) and Brian Kilkenny Finn (Edward Norton) are best friends from childhood on New York's Upper West Side.Their lives have followed strikingly similar paths. Jake is a rabbi whose glib sermons are rapidly turning him into a local celebrity, and Brian is a Roman Catholic priest whose idealism provides comfort to his congregation.
Both are confident and hugely successful, but neither has experienced the joys of falling in love. Brian is happily single, more concerned with ministering to the masses, and Jake is so busy trying to stop his mother (Anne Bancroft) from setting him up with every pretty young Jewish girl in the city, that he doesn't have time to find a mate of his own.
So it comes as something of a shock to both of them when their childhood friend Anne Reilly (Jenna Elfman), now a beautiful corporate executive, arrives in town for two weeks, immediately re-entering their lives and their hearts with a vengeance.
Jake and Brian are instantly smitten, but neither wants to declare their true feelings to Anna. But temptation proves hard to resist, and as the temperature rises in the city, so the two holy men find their thoughts turning to romance.The first half of Edward Norton's directorial debut exhibits a playfulness and wry sense of humour towards relationships and religion reminiscent of Woody Allen.
Quotable lines fizz pleasantly on the actors' tongues - "I have a relationship with my phone. It's set to vibrate," declares Anna - delivered with perfect comic timing by the three attractive leads.By the time the holy men are preparing to come to blows, using their skills as orators like duelling pistols, the tone of Stuart Blumberg's screenplay has become much darker, with the wrecking balls of jealousy and guilt crashing through the trio's once stable lives.
Norton directs with the lightest of touches, and in front of the camera, he shows a deftness for comedy, but sensibly lets Stiller (plying his trademark little-boy-lost charm) take the lion's share of the movie.
Elfman makes the most of the material she is given and looks luminous in close-up (Norton is rather fond of filling the entire screen with her perfect cheek bones) but tends to be short-changed in the acerbic exchanges. She is badly underused in the latter sections: given her limited screen time, it's not always easy to see why two grown men would be fighting over her character.
The film drags its clerical heels badly towards the end and some of the relationships and sub-plots are left hanging in the air, others hastily resolved. The guys' apparent lack of concern about abandoning their religious callings is rather troubling too. Here endeth the lesson. Amen.
Jake Schram (Ben Stiller) and Brian Kilkenny Finn (Edward Norton) are best friends from childhood on New York's Upper West Side.Their lives have followed strikingly similar paths. Jake is a rabbi whose glib sermons are rapidly turning him into a local celebrity, and Brian is a Roman Catholic priest whose idealism provides comfort to his congregation.
Both are confident and hugely successful, but neither has experienced the joys of falling in love. Brian is happily single, more concerned with ministering to the masses, and Jake is so busy trying to stop his mother (Anne Bancroft) from setting him up with every pretty young Jewish girl in the city, that he doesn't have time to find a mate of his own.
So it comes as something of a shock to both of them when their childhood friend Anne Reilly (Jenna Elfman), now a beautiful corporate executive, arrives in town for two weeks, immediately re-entering their lives and their hearts with a vengeance.
Jake and Brian are instantly smitten, but neither wants to declare their true feelings to Anna. But temptation proves hard to resist, and as the temperature rises in the city, so the two holy men find their thoughts turning to romance.The first half of Edward Norton's directorial debut exhibits a playfulness and wry sense of humour towards relationships and religion reminiscent of Woody Allen.
Quotable lines fizz pleasantly on the actors' tongues - "I have a relationship with my phone. It's set to vibrate," declares Anna - delivered with perfect comic timing by the three attractive leads.By the time the holy men are preparing to come to blows, using their skills as orators like duelling pistols, the tone of Stuart Blumberg's screenplay has become much darker, with the wrecking balls of jealousy and guilt crashing through the trio's once stable lives.
Norton directs with the lightest of touches, and in front of the camera, he shows a deftness for comedy, but sensibly lets Stiller (plying his trademark little-boy-lost charm) take the lion's share of the movie.
Elfman makes the most of the material she is given and looks luminous in close-up (Norton is rather fond of filling the entire screen with her perfect cheek bones) but tends to be short-changed in the acerbic exchanges. She is badly underused in the latter sections: given her limited screen time, it's not always easy to see why two grown men would be fighting over her character.
The film drags its clerical heels badly towards the end and some of the relationships and sub-plots are left hanging in the air, others hastily resolved. The guys' apparent lack of concern about abandoning their religious callings is rather troubling too. Here endeth the lesson. Amen.
