This dramatization of the events surrounding the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 should never have been made. My companion described it as history as might have been depicted on Saturday Night Live. While not played for laughs, the film, with its contrivances and absurdities of plot, is, indeed, laughable.

O Jerusalem's leading characters, a Jew still in uniform from World War II and a Palestinian, meet by chance one night in New York in 1946 and become fast friends. Bobby Goldman introduces Said Chahine to his friends, including one loudmouthed Zionist who occasionally provokes Said, but never mind, they're all still good friends anyway.

In quick cuts to late 1947, when the UN General Assembly votes for partition, these friends all inexplicably stumble their way to Palestine, and the real fun begins. In short order, Bobby is a leading fighter in the Hagana, striding with David Ben-Gurion himself as strategic decisions are made, while Said becomes a leader of Palestinian irregular forces, meeting with Transjordan's King Abdullah and others of note.

Speaking after a preview screening at the Manhattan JCC, Tovah Feldshuh, who in O Jerusalem portrays Golda Meir yet again (a role she can fairly be said to own due to her star turn in the Broadway and LA stage productions of Golda's Balcony), indicated that the movie was made with a severe budgetary problem. She said that director Elie Chouraqui "made it work" through the liberal use of stock documentary footage and spare editing. Two of her scenes were cut entirely. She even indicated that the filming wasn't fully completed.

With all due respect to Ms. Feldshuh, who was not terrible in her minimal role, the acting met a very low standard. The only real characters viewers can follow throughout are J.J. Feild (who vaguely resembles Jude Law) as Bobby and Said Taghmaoui as Said, memorable for his dark complexion and moods. Aside from Feldshuh, the only well-known members of the cast are Ian Holm as Ben-Gurion, played spot-on physically but completely without depth, and Tom Conti, unrecognizable to me in what amounted to little more than a cameo as the British commanding general. The actors are imprisoned by their script, which has them speechifying rather than talking to each other.

Most of the characters are so badly drawn that looking at a cast listing afterward, I didn't remember most of them. And I didn't much care what happened to them, even though several die in the course of events. To call this ‘melodrama' would be a step up, as melodramas often succeed in affecting our emotions.

Worse still, evidenced by their own publicity, the producers don't even know what they purport to be doing. The film is based upon the popular 1972 historical account of the same name, coauthored by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. But a postcard publicizing the movie erroneously calls the book a "novel."

Although what has been written since publication of the book about the momentous events surrounding the birth of the State of Israel may supersede the authority of the work by Collins and Lapierre, theirs was an honest and powerful attempt to depict history. This movie muddies history entirely.

For example, the uninformed viewer would have no notion that the Arab Legion of Transjordan captured the Old City of Jerusalem. Its Jewish defenders are bloodied but still standing at the end of the battle, and the combatants on both sides literally embrace each other, illustrating the film's saccharine point of view that there are few bad guys here. There are hotheads and terrorists on both sides, with the Irgun and the Stern Gang the only ones explicitly named as such. Unseen forces, as the movie would have it, have pushed Arabs and Jews into killing each other.

This intends well but it's not history. It's also not decent filmmaking.