As Good As It Gets

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I saw Loving Leah recently for the first time and a few times since. Lauren was faithful to the character throughout and nudged her "replacement husband" from his almost terrified responsibility to his deceased brother for the good of his brother's name and Leah. Jake seemed barely into the idea of marriage as it turned another relationship upside down in a way that was slightly comical as Jake squirmed as he dealt with the two women in his life and not being sure which way to turn. (Having know a woman co-worker years ago who lived a closely guarded with chaperons on dates and strict public and private moral behavior, I think I can in a small way understand what Leah was going through.) Leah was like a butterfly emerging from the restrictions that bound her to her faith and duty for her deceased husband and this new husband and ever so subtly made the new life inescapable for Jake who tried to carry on his own life as a doctor while being drawn into Leah's innocent charm. Leah's quiet charm had me falling in love with her too!

The basic plot about a young religious widow whose unobservant brother in law decides to "fake" marry her because he misunderstands Yibum / Halitzah (which by the way -almost always Halitzah- is still practiced and the brother in law doesn't have to be single ) and feels guilty about having lost contact with his suddenly deceased Religious "rabbi" (not all religious Jews are Rabbis) brother. Leah the widow agrees because she sees it as an option to get more freedom and control over her life - her mother is pressuring her to remarry and doesn't approve of her wanting to go to collage. This part of the plot while unusual could be believable. As a religious Jew, I found an number things unrealistic or overly omitted. Firstly no mention of Jake's (or anyone's) need to say Kaddish (a prayer in affirming g-d in honor of the dead) for his brother. Little things - like when did Leah change the dishes so she could eat off them and cook in his kitchen. But most unrealistic that Leah would go to a reform synagogue and spend Shabbat with a reform Rabbi woman or not(Reform Jews do not observe the Sabbath in a way Leah would /could identify with and generally do not keep kosher). Judaism is a very family and community based religion. While Leah might have wanted more freedom and might there for have avoided the very closed orthodox type of community she came from... it is more logical and reasonable for her to join a modern orthodox -young Israel community or at lest a conservative synagogue. She apparently found kosher food stores and a kosher Chinese restaurant. Also was a lack of spiritual growth in Jake that could make the meeting of their worlds and hearts more realistic. Again the film and acting was quite good but had there been more development of the growth and changes that were bringing Leah and Jake together it could have been much ,much better.

To begin with, a real Orthodox Jewish woman, from an Orthodox Jewish community, would not bother making an oven kosher for use if she couldn't count on her own flatmate to try to keep it kosher, or even to know what's kosher and what isn't. She wouldn't go to a swimming pool where men are allowed in at the same time. She wouldn't even hold a conversation alone with a strange man on a rooftop. We're given to understand that the heroine of this film isn't the typical Orthodox Jewish woman anyway, because she likes to sneak out to the movies; but obviously the real reason for her atypical behavior is that without it, the plot of the film could never occur. Also misrepresented is Reform Judaism: a Reform rabbi explains soberly about the interaction between the living and those who have passed on, and although with enough effort you could probably find a Reform rabbi who would say almost anything, I think you would look hard before you found one who claimed that the dead soul goes through experiences, and harder yet before you found one who claimed to know exactly what those experiences are. All that said, what we have here is a well acted film albeit a doubly formulaic one-- formulaic both in the progress of its love story and in its reconciliation of ostensibly incompatible ways of life.

As I am a secular Israeli, I would be very interested in seeing this film.Here, "halitza", as it's called, is nothing romantic and cute. There is no civil marriage, so if a Jewish widow wants to remarry, she MUST have it from her bro-in-law. This has been problematic when 1) the dead husband leaves a brother under the age of thirteen or 2) brother-in-law knows that charging her for doing giving it to her or 3) dead husbands family just wants to deny her the possibility of remarriage to be mean.I know a fellow that wanted to marry a widow, but her late husbands family were asking for an astronomical price to set her free, so they went to Cyprus to marry.We have the Hallmark channel, so I hope it eventually gets here.