Reuniting The Rubins - review - Film - Arts - Evening Standard
       

Reuniting The Rubins - review

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Yoav Factor's debut feature has the admirable Timothy Spall in the lead and a good central story about Jewish family ructions. It would be nice to welcome it more warmly but in truth it is a ponderous effort that only occasionally catches fire.

Spall, doing his darndest in a part that ought to have given him better lines, plays a lawyer who has put his retirement on hold to look after his ailing but still perky mother (Honor Blackman). He doesn't get much assistance from his grown-up children. One is a young tycoon, another is a tiresome ultra-orthodox rabbi, a third is a contemplative Buddhist in pink robes and there's a daughter who can't stand any of them. They all hate each other, in fact - and poor old dad goes mad trying to get them all together for mum's sake.

Blake Harrison, Rhona Mitra, James Callis and Hugh O'Connor do their best, as do Spall and Blackman, with material that flatters to deceive. It's a decent idea gone wrong for want of a better script and tighter direction.

Reuniting The Rubins
Cert: PG

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