I love Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, so I was eager to see them play off each other in “Between the Temples.” However, a messy third act made the film fall apart.

“Between the Temples” tells the story of Ben (Schwartzman) and Carla (Kane). Ben, who was widowed about a year before the film takes place, is living with his moms (Caroline Aaron and Dolly De Leon) and working as a teacher at his local temple, prepping young people for their bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies.

He has a particularly rough night and winds up crossing paths with Carla, his childhood music teacher and a widow herself. She then shows up at his work, saying she would like to have a bat mitzvah, as she never had one as a kid. He very reluctantly agrees to teach her.

They develop a very unique friendship over the course of the next few weeks, with different scenes providing moments of heart and humor.

While Schwartzman and Kane are both charming and the story is intriguing, the final chapter of this film really came from left field for me.

In the final act, there is a dinner party scene that is so profoundly awkward and out of place that it really detracts from the whole film and leads to a lackluster ending to a truly compelling story.

I probably was going to give “Between the Temples” a higher rating right up until that sequence. I might even be giving it an extra half star just because it references my favorite film of all time, “The Philadelphia Story.”

Rating: 3/5