A wickedly funny, Naked Gun-style parody that conflates old-style private-eye pics with Shaft and, yes, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
60
Film Threat
Film Threat
Writer/director John Kesselman serves up a stylin' live-action spoof that irreverently milks stereotypes and bravely pokes fun at that which is usually sacrosanct.
60
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
You don't have to be Jewish to love Jonathan Kesselman's uneven, profane and occasionally flat-out hilarious parody of vintage blaxploitation pictures, but it helps.
Ultimately more interested in exploiting clichés than subverting or commenting on them, and Coyote and Dunn's grotesque caricatures are embarrassing.
40
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
The result is explicit, if less than hilarious. The Hebrew Hammer lacks the edge of Adam Sandler's "Chanukah Song," although as anti-seasonal fare, it would make a suitably unbearable double bill with Terry Zwigoff's "Bad Santa."
40
L.A. Weekly
L.A. Weekly
But the corker-to-groaner ratio heavily favors the latter as the bagel-and-dreidel jokes begin to lose their spark, as does the story
Would have worked brilliantly as a five-minute late-night comedy sketch, flogs its premise for nearly an hour and a half, generating too few laughs to justify the enterprise.