This is a new golden age for the Israeli genre, “Seretai Bourekas,” comedies with a lot of shtick and slapstick. The latest example is Checkout, a feature-film version of the sitcom of the same title, known in Hebrew as Kupa Rashit, which just opened in theaters across Israel.
Checkout, which runs in Israel on KAN 11 and is also available on Netflix, is one of Israel’s most popular series.
The movie has already sold a quarter of a million tickets in its first few days (including on Israeli Cinema Day on June 17), a notable accomplishment when most Israeli films don’t reach 100,000 viewers.
If you want to see Checkout, you may want to buy tickets in advance, because some showings are selling out.
When I saw the movie last week on Israeli Cinema Day, the audience was the most engaged and attentive I can recall, clapping and cheering, offering words of advice, and calling insults and encouragement to the characters.
The film follows the stories of staff and customers at a fictional supermarket
They obviously knew and loved the series and wanted to see more of it.
The movie version plays like a longer-than-usual episode, just as they had hoped for. Checkout tells stories of the staff and customers of the Yavne branch of the fictional Shefa Issachar supermarket chain, often in a mockumentary format.
One of the main characters is Shira (Noa Koler), the relentlessly positive assistant manager who has been reading Steve Jobs’ autobiography for years and whose attitude drives the more demoralized employees crazy.
Other key characters include the extraordinarily vain and self-centered cashier Kochava (Keren Mor), Avichai (Yigal Adika), the bossy manager, Amnon Titinski (Dov Navon), the fussy customer whose life revolves around trying to get discounts at the store, and Ramzi (Amir Shurush), an Israeli Arab assistant who sees life through the same rose-colored glasses as Shira.
Nissim (Yaniv Swissa), a religiously observant butcher; Anatoly (Daniel Styopin), Nissim’s buddy, whose wife’s endless pregnancy is one of the movie’s running jokes; Naomi (Maya Landsman), a tough warehouse worker; and several others lend strong support in prominent parts as well.
The movie opens with Shira going to great lengths to impress the new owner of the Shefa Issachar chain with how wonderful the service is in the Yavne branch, in a scene in which he arrives in the parking lot via helicopter, which predictably wreaks havoc with the doves Shira has chosen to release in order to celebrate his arrival.
He announces that the best supermarket in the chain will receive a NIS 400,000 bonus.
Many of the movie’s funniest scenes come from watching the usual lazy employees try to up their game and be nice to everyone, a challenge for most of them, especially Kochava.
Just as they are angling to win the prize, with Nissim in particular counting on the bonus to pay for his son’s bar mitzvah celebration, a crime occurs in the supermarket, and several employees are blamed.
The comedy includes a sentimental touch
I won’t give away the details, because a comedy like this is more fun when there’s a little suspense. Though some parts of the movie will be predictable for Checkout's fans, that doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyable, and the plot has some clever twists, especially in its finale.
The actors all seem to be having as good a time as the audience I watched it with.
The standout character was Keren Mor as Kochava, the kind of cashier people switch lines to avoid, who drives much of the plot through the actions she takes when someone publicly states her age incorrectly, saying she is older than she really is.
Amir Shurush, the winner of last season’s Dancing with the Stars, also gets to dance around the supermarket, and it’s fun to watch him.
But as is usually the case with all variations of the Seretai Bourekas formula, there is a sentimental side to the movie, more so than in most episodes of the show, and certain people turn out to have hearts of gold, especially those who wear a lot of fake gold.
Checkout was written by Yaniv Zohar with Nadav Frishman, Matan Blumenblat, and Daniel Salganik and was directed by Kobi Havia.
Part of the appeal of the movie and the series is that they deal with the lives of ordinary people who struggle to make ends meet, and the characters really seem like people you deal with every day in Israel.
This has also been true of the other popular comedies of the last few years, such as the Saving Shuli movies with the Mah Kashur trio, as well as Maktub, Forgiveness, and Cat’s Luck, directed by Guy Amir and Hanan Savyon.
While many Israeli filmmakers tackle more serious subjects, these moviemakers and those behind Checkout look at what is really going on right outside their windows and make fun of it, and audiences love them for it.