Yentl (1983)

Directed by Barbra Streisand. Starring Barbra Streisand, Mandy Patinkin, Amy Irving, Steven Hill, Nehemiah Persoff, Miriam Margolyes, Allan Corduner, Doreen Mantle. [PG]

Genderbending social role defiance as soggy kitsch—a deadeningly self-indulgent musical expansion of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story (“Yentl the Yeshiva Boy”) that served as Streisand’s directorial debut, an effort that’s undermined by a fatal flaw: Streisand the actress, hysterically miscast as the title character, who never resembles the young woman she’s supposed to actually be or the boy that she’s supposed to be passing herself off as. She plays a turn-of-the-century Polish Jew who wants to study the Talmud, but is forbidden from doing so because she’s female, so she cuts her hair and attends a yeshiva under the name of her deceased brother; complications ensue for her/him, including developing romantic feelings for fellow student Patinkin and reluctantly agreeing to marry his ex-fiancée (Irving). The Streisand faithful tend to adore this vanity project, and why not, considering how much her camera loves her and how many songs she’s permitted to sing as screen-hogging soliloquies (over a dozen, most of which just blend together, but, hey, it’s Babs)? All others are recommended to just go watch Fiddler on the Roof again. Irving was for a long time the only actress to ever be nominated for both an Academy Award and a Razzie for the same performance, until Glenn Close joined her for that dubious distinction with 2020’s Hillbilly Elegy.

37/100