Returning to a film after a considerable gap in time, in this case 23 years, is a risky business.
Will the film be as rose-coloured glasses good as you remember it? Will you sigh in all the places you did the first time around, laugh in all the others and get invested in a way that every filmmaker dreams their audiences will be?
And crucially for this 2023 viewing of Keeping the Faith, a 2000 film directed by star Edward Norton, will it feel as romantic watching the film via DVD (yes, some of us still have those; it beats competing with the streaming services to watch it before they delete it from their slate of offerings) in a loungeroom in Western Sydney as it did in a multi-level cinema in New York City, where the movie is set, mere hours after walking through some of its settings?
The good news for this underappreciated gem of a romantic comedy is that not only is it as funny, swoon-worthy and charmingly sweet as it was over two decades ago, buoyed by a smartly literate, emotionally resonant screenplay and pitch perfect performances by Edward Norton, Ben Stiller and Jenna Elfman, but it feels every bit as big stakes romantic as it first felt.
Premised on the idea that once-super close childhood friends, Jake (Stiller), Brian (Norton) and Anna (Elfman) have been reunited as adults years after they were separated by Anna moving to California when she was a young teenager, and find that not only has the friendship survived but romantic longing has now also joined the happily heady mix, Keeping the Faith is a breezily upbeat look, save for the inevitable final act relational schism which by law all rom-coms are required to have, at whether you can go back to where you once were.
In a physical sense, close friends Jake aka Jacob, who’s now a rabbi, and Brian, now a Catholic priest, never left New York City and emotionally it’s very much still their home too, but when Anna slides back into their lives, all ridiculously easy beauty and brio and a corporate whizkid to boot, it raises the very real issue of whether the past can meet the present and everyone can be happy.
At first, it seems like everyone can indeed slip back into their old roles.
In New York City for six months of high-flying corporate rescues – Anna describes herself as a plumber for leaky corporations, helping to make them better; she loves her work but it takes a toll on her personal life and leaves no room for love … or does it? – Anna’s return feels like getting the gang back together but in a way even better than before.
With both Jake and Brian secure and super successful in their respective callings – they are the hip new young vanguards of their faiths who are filling the pews and making religion fun again, assuming the fossilised keepers of the faith will let them do their thing – and Anna very much grown-up and hitting all kinds of homeruns career-wise, the trio are set for a revival of their friendship but one where they can bring a very adult slant on things.
No one thinks for a second that that means one of them will fall in love with Anna although her sexy, slo-mo fun arrival at the airport, where Jake and Brian playfully hold up an “Anna Banana” sign does suggest both of them have held some kind of candle for her ever since her parents drove her off all those years, leaving the boys standing bereft in a quintessential New York City street. (Like all good NYC-set rom-coms, Keeping the Faith is as much a love letter to the locale as a story of two people falling gloriously if nervously in love.)
Happily hemmed in by his vows that preclude relationships and sex of the romantic kind, it seems like Brian is not in the running for Anna’s affections but Jake is an altogether different proposition, despite the fact that as a rabbi-apparent at his synagogue he is expected to marry a good Jewish girl and make one of the many mothers pushing their daughters forward as a possible wife-to-be blissfully happy.
He doesn’t really want to and dutifully goes on a series of dates, some excruciatingly bad, others just plain chemistry-free, compelled by duty, at least in this respect, to do the right thing.
But you know that love, like life in the Jurassic Park films, will find a way, and after yet another unfulfilling trip to the possible marriage aisle, Jake ends up as Anna’s serviced apartment and … THINGS HAPPEN.
Casual, friends-with-benefits things that aren’t supposed to get serious, that are just a fun diversion while Anna is in town and she and Jake can amuse themselves before the rest of life sweeps them up in its endless forward momentum.
But this is a rom-com, a smart, clever, funny one that embraces its tropes as avidly as Anna and Jake surreptitiously caress each other, and it’s obvious that Jake and Anna are meant to be together.
Alas, Jake must marry a good Jewish girl or his mum Ruth (Anne Bancroft) will do what she did to his older brother, who made the mistake of marrying a Catholic woman, and so it seems Jake must forgo Anna for duty and family and love, pure, true, decades-in-the-making love must be left behind.
But this is, again, a rom-com, and there’s always some way for love to triumph over all, and happily for Keeping the Faith by not treating the earnest religious convictions of both Jake and Brian as immaterial or easily tossed aside.
The screenplay has worked hard to establish that their faith MATTERS, and whether you are as ardent in your beliefs as they are, you will appreciate the fact that film doesn’t expediently treat what they hold dear as nothing simply to get Jake and Anna across the line with their friendship with Brian, though tested, still very much intact as it’s always been.
One of the chief charms of this gem of a rom-com is that is holds true to its characters, respecting their friendship and beliefs with the inevitable pairing of Jake and Anna always making sense in the overall context of their enduring friendship and the fact that Brian is closer than a brother and always will be.
Falling in love is wondrous and scary and thrilling and unnerving all at once, and Keeping the Faith captures this with great humour and heart, alive with vibrant performances, New York City on its best behaviour and a clear understanding that you can indeed go back but that you need to be prepared for the fact that the landscape may be entirely different to what you expect or remember which, in this heartwarming case at least, isn’t a bad thing at all.