Esther Blueburger “befriends a duck, talks to God through the toilet and break-dances at her bat mitzvah.” In other words, Hey! Hey! It’s Esther Blueburger
is my kind of movie.
Replace the sprinkles with braces and you’ve almost got a younger Betty Suarez. The story is a little Betty-like, too. Danielle Catanzariti makes her film debut as Esther, a 13-year-old Jewish girl who doesn’t fit in at her private girls’ school — or with her family. And she’s nervous about her bat mitzvah.
Things start to change for Esther when she meets Sunni, played by Whale Rider‘s Keisha Castle-Hughes, the “tough girl” at the local public school.
Esther decides to switch from private school to public school — without telling her mom — and reinvents herself, with help from Sunni and her mother, Mary, played by the wonderful Toni Collette. Here’s the trailer.
If I wasn’t convinced before, seeing Collette on a motorcycle makes this film a must-see. It opens in Australia in March; hopefully we’ll see it in the U.S. soon after.
Although this is Catanzariti’s first movie, she has been a stage actress in Australia for several years. In fact,
