Review: Oy Vey! My Son Is Gay!

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Starring: Lainie Kazan, Saul Rubinek, Vincent Pastore, John Lloyd Young, Jai Rodriguez, Bruce Vilanch and Carmen Electra.
Written and Directed by Eugene Afineevsky
A wildly funny farce about two Jewish parents who don’t want to believe their son is gay.

In the farcical tradition of Norman, Is That You?, Mambo Italiano and La Cage aux Folles comes this raucous, star-studded comedy about two determined Jewish parents who will do anything to keep their faygala son on the straight and narrow. The indomitable Lainie Kazan is the brassy and opinionated Shirley, and Saul Rubinek is her long under-her-thumb husband, Martin. Blissfully unaware that the sexual revolution has come and gone, their only wish is that their son marry a nice Jewish girl. When their very successful (and so handsome!) son Nelson reluctantly reveals that his is in fact gay (and on top of that, his lover is a goy!), it sets off a series of actions by his frantically scheming parents to make him understand that it’s just a phase.

A terrifically funny cast includes a beardless Bruce Vilanch as a (barely) closeted husband, Jai Rodriguez (“Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”) as the love interest and the burley Vincent Pastore (“The Sopranos”) as Jai’s accepting father. But it is Carmen Electra, who steals every scene she is in, as the blonde bombshell vixen asked by the parents to seduce the son back to heterosexuality. More Jewish than kugels and Manischewitz, Oy Vey delivers the laughs big time.