a serious man?

the only thing serious about this movie is its title. it is a coen brothers film about a jewish physics professor named larry gopnick who is black mailed , has marital strife and and various eccentric family members. the jewish week likens larry gopnick to a modern day job. i say they are giving this film too much credit. this is a film that is one note more serious than an adam sandler movie.
the film begins with larry's 12 yr old son in hebrew school. he is close to bar mitzvah. the funniest scenes are those with the hebrew school teachers and children.
the film seems to be depicting reform jews in 1967 who seem to know a heck of alot more about judaism than most reform jews know. granted this is 1967, not 2007, but the characters are constantly referring to g-d as hashem, and ive never met a reform jew who would ever do this let alone actually know that hashem meant g-d. several of the rabbis in the film do not wear kippot in the tradition of reform jews of that era. the rabbis were portrayed in seinfeldian tradition. because they were sooo cartoonish you couldnt be too insulted by how absurd they behaved. i wish i knew more about reform judaism because i think i was missing out on some of the jokes.
as usual when i watch a movie with more authentic jewish references i find myself the only person in the audience laughing. often the hebrew/yiddish terms were not translated. the barmitzvah boy had a friend named he kept calling faigel. turns out the kids last name really was faigel. it took me awhile to figure this out . i kept thinking he was making fun of his friend. this of course was an inside joke for those in the know because it was never explained. i of course was the only one laughing about this one. there were other instances too, but i dont want to give them away if you decide to see the movie.
there is strife between larry and his wife who is carrying on with a homely widower 20 years her senior. one would be offended by the wife's overdone stereotypical jewish wife behavior, but she was so over the top one could not help but just laugh.
this is one of those few movies where actual jewish actors were used to portray jews.
after all of the comical strife that befalls larry gopnick the film has the most perfect ending. i will not tell you what it is, but i loved it.
this movie is most definitely not the the story of a modern day job. its much too over the top .
entertainment weekly said and and i concur that the idea of this movie is to show how jews of the 1960's thought they were so assimilated, but really they weren't. the way they showed this was by the inappropriately frum jargon the characters used by reform jewish characters. i find this especially interesting because more yiddish would have been used if this film were more authentic to the time period. more hebrew was used due to the lack of fluency in yiddish of the current young movie going audience.
a serious man was not the dark film i thought i was going to be. i didnt want to actually like it, it just worked out that way.