- Best friends since they were kids, Rabbi Jacob Schram (Ben Stiller) and Father Brian Finn (Edward Norton) are dynamic and popular young men living and working on New York s Upper West Side. When Anna Reilly (Jenna Elfman), once their childhood friend and now grown into a beautiful corporate executive, suddenly returns to the city, she reenters Jake and Brian s lives and hearts with a vengeance. Sp
A San Francisco newspaper film critic becomes pregnant after a hookup with a much younger man and together they raise a nontraditional family. Golden Globe Award winner, Jenna Elfman plays Billie, who after a hard breakup with her boss, James, played by Private Practice's Grant Show, then gets knocked up by Zack, Windfall's Jon Foster. They make a nontraditional arrangement to live together platonically and raise the child. But when Zack friends turn her place into a frat house, Billie isn't sure th! at the plan can work out. Ben Stiller (THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS), Jenna Elfman (EdTV), and Edward Norton (FIGHT CLUB) star in KEEPING THE FAITH, a sexy romantic comedy so fresh and funny, you'll fall head over heels in love! Jake Schram (Stiller) and Brian Finn (Norton) are single, successful, extremely popular guys who have been best friends since, well, forever. They are about to be reunited with their other best childhood buddy -- the feisty, lanky tomboy, Anna (Elfman). Anna has grown into a high-powered workaholic beauty whose reentry into their lives turns this old circle of friends into a love triangle -- a very complicated one at that, because Jake's a rabbi and Brian is a priest. But have faith -- this gem is going to steal your heart.
Keeping the Faith, Edward Norton's directorial debut, centers on Jake (Ben Stiller) and Brian (Norton), a rabbi and a priest who've been best friends since childhood. Both find their callings and grow into strong spiritual lead! ers for their community. The clever and occasionally slapstick! comedy as Jake and Ben find their places in the religious community is precisely timed, and the film begins with a bang. Yet when childhood friend Anna (Jenna Elfman)--the perfect woman, a cross between "Jonny Quest and Tatum O'Neal"--finds them after all these years, both men fall for the stunning woman who is married to her career and her vibrating cell phone. But what starts as the making of a great joke (of course, the priest is sworn to celibacy and there's not much of a market for a rabbi married to a gentile) turns into a somewhat mawkish romance with mixed messages about the meaning of faith and the power of love. When Anna and Jake secretly begin a tryst, "just for fun," they of course fall in love, which is where the movie begins to unravel, as Anna is oblivious to the turmoil Jake might be feeling in having to choose between his faith and her. Jake turns into a total schmuck, Brian into a drunken idiot, and every secondary character becomes a clichéd stereotype, right d! own to the yentas in the synagogue and the kindly mentor (director Milos Forman) who guides Brian. However, despite the muck, Norton is surprisingly sympathetic and Elfman is an adorable heroine who helps bring some shining, fun moments to a mediocre film.
--Jenny Brown
