Yentl

Despite Streisand's apparently hypnotic hold over a large portion of the earth's population, it's still almost impossible to equate the critical plaudits already bestowed on Yentl with the movie itself. This lumbering, overwrought, and wildly self-indulgent adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's frail short story is clearly cranked up with the full quotient of sincerity and conviction. But it is this very earnestness of tone that topples a pretty dubious premise - Streisand dresses up as a boy in order to learn the Talmud - into galloping bathos. The end result looks like nothing so much as the raw material for every Woody Allen Jewish joke ever coined.