jeremy3 Review of Over the Brooklyn Bridge

Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984)

Amusing Hollywood view of Jewish life

[6/10 · 16 July 2018]

Not being Jewish myself, I would guess traditional Jews will find this plot a bit simplistic and secularist. For most of the audience it is an entertaining movie. It is hard to see Elliott Gould as overweight, but in this file he plays an overweight, neurotic, and diabetic middle aged ma who falls for a pretty young woman from Philadelphia of Irish descent. His extended family lives in the secular World and does not. His mom runs a deli with a black man working there, and his best friend is an Italian American. His uncle is a successful businessman who wants his nephew to marry a Jewish woman. However, he finds that he loves his non-Jewish woman and also wants to open his own restaurant in Manhattan. He is trying to be his own man, and no matter how polite he is about it it inevitably leads to family conflict. His uncle is pressuring him to marry a Jewish woman that he does not love. In the end, he makes his stand and wins. An entertaining movie, but in real life the pressures may be too great and maybe tradition is not all bad, if you look at the points that the movie Avalon made. It is romanticized in this country to be completely independent, but for most people tradition s also security.