Paramount will release to DVD today a telefilm that aired on Comedy Central last year. Hillel at Brandeis will be screening the film that evening as part of a national DVD-release event of coordinated screenings at approximately 80 campuses throughout the United States. When it was first aired, The Hebrew Hammer met a broad range of reviews-from disgust to adoration. I remember its original broadcast, which I watched out of an odd sort of curiosity. It is the first major film to use "blaxploitation," a technique and device popularized by 1971's Shaft sub-genre where the race of the central characters is switched from Black to Jewish. In an era of rising anti-Semitism, the prospect of a film with a strong, hip, overtly Jewish central character was intriguing to me. I have to admit here my bias, as a Jew, for films that depict Jews constructively and well. For a short while, I thought that The Hebrew Hammer would fit that categorization. Sadly, the film tanks after a fairly strong initial half hour, much of which is a re-make of director Jonathan Kesselman's second-year student film at the University of Southern California .

This original short, available on the new DVD, is shot in 16mm black-and-white and captures Kesselman's initial vision very succinctly. The feature's opening is stronger than the short film it replicates, but only in those aspects that a bigger budget can buy-slicker camera moves, better production design, and an actor (Adam Goldberg, Saving Private Ryan) who fits the role much more effectively. After the initial introduction of the characters, the film dives dramatically in almost every way.

The opportunity to see the original short is by far the most refreshing and interesting component to the otherwise bland DVD. It sheds light on the origins of the film, and in doing so, helps to clarify the origins of the film's failings. The central character in the short, like in the film, is Mordechai Jefferson Carver, a.k.a. "The Hebrew Hammer," a Jewish private investigator. Both the short and the feature immediately, establish an odd, potentially interesting aspect of the character-he is an Orthodox Jew in appearance who begins his day in the bed of a scantily-clad Jewish girl who, my gut insists, couldn't possibly be his wife. Although this could have been an interesting statement, it is delivered as a stock comic device. The joke relies on the stereotypical expectations of a repressed sexuality in Orthodox men. The rest of the short relies on plenty of stereotypes for its humor-stereotypes of all sorts of people. The feature does this to an even greater extreme.

Although these formulaic-character types can be spectacularly inflammatory, they can also be an important tool for a storyteller. When used properly, they shorten the time it takes to get to know a character - only those traits that significantly distinguish the character from the stereotype have to be described or explained, and the rest gets filled in by our unintentional cultural awareness. The Hebrew Hammer certainly seems to be smashing stereotypes-a highly sexualized Orthodox guy with big 'guns' doesn't fit in to any of the typological portrayals that I know about, but in fact, the humor of this character results from dissonance with the stereotype.

I listened to part of the audio commentary track that accompanies the film, in hopes of understanding from the filmmakers themselves why they made the choices they made. To my dismay, the commentary featuring the writer/director Jonathan Kesselman, his brother/producer Josh Kesselman, their mother and the lead actor Adam Goldberg was little more than confused banter between the speakers with occasional anecdotal comments about the people involved in the production. The Kesselmans, while Jewish, are not Orthodox, and consequently by their own admission, are not very knowledgeable about traditional Judaism. They seem to revel in their stereotyping of Orthodoxy, as if they made the film not out of respect or admiration for Judaism, but out of anger and frustration at its position in the world, with the un-reformed, un-informed Jews being their central targets. Rather than redeeming the film, the Kesselmans, in the audio track, validate my concerns about it.

Other features on the DVD include deleted scenes. There is also a gag reel, with several outtakes, only one of which is funny.

Now in a great film, there's often a question of whether those scenes that were removed might have improved the movie further. Most of the time, deleted scenes were deleted because they simply were unnecessary. In a great film, a deleted scene might have been left out because it was merely good. In a mediocre film, like this one, a deleted scene was probably cut out because it was simply bad.

Sometimes a DVD's special features can improve a film by contributing to our understanding and appreciation of it. I was surprised by The Hebrew Hammer DVD in that these additional features achieved quite the opposite. After viewing all aspects of the DVD, the film appeals to me less now than it did a week ago.