From the Friday, June 6 Oregonian....
"You Don't Mess with the Zohan" might actually be the stupidest movie with good intentions that I've ever seen.
This comedy concerns an Israeli counterterrorist named Zohan (Adam Sandler) who dreams of becoming a New York hairdresser. It was co-written by Sandler and the genuinely talented Judd Apatow and Robert Smigel, and you can see what they tried (and utterly failed) to do here:
They wanted to make a movie about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that was so ridiculous, it made the Israeli/Palestinian conflict itself look ridiculous.
Well, that's kind of a noble idea, I guess. Unfortunately -- somewhere between the crack-up-your-friends-with-stupid-ideas story conferences and the big screen -- everyone forgot the difference between "ridiculous" and "funny." "Zohan" is long, weird, crass and more than a little offensive.
Zohan himself is less a character and more a collection of sketch-comedy attributes. He loves to wiggle his hips, dip anything and everything in hummus, and study the hairstyles in a 1980s Paul Mitchell catalog between missions -- during which he smacks around terrorists like a Warner Brothers cartoon character and trades blows with famous terrorist/restaurateur The Phantom (John Turturro).
When Zohan tires of the endless conflict and flees to New York, he gets a job in a salon on the Palestinian side of the street in a Middle Eastern neighborhood. It's here that the movie launches its dominant running gag, one that never, ever becomes funny: Zohan loves giving old women '80s haircuts and then sexually servicing them, loudly and athletically, in the back room afterward.
There are endless stretches of this movie that contain little more than gags about eldersex, hummus and the accents of the neighborhood denizens, voiced by (among others) Rob Schneider in makeup I can only describe as "tanface." There are a couple of amusing action bits and one or two trenchant moments where the neighborhood Israeli-Americans and Palestinean-Americans find they can't work up the interest to sustain their political arguments. But like several characters in the movie, these moments are drowned in hummus and beaten senseless by Sandler's absurdly gyrating pelvis.
I write all the above with a heavy heart, for I am and have been an Adam Sandler apologist. I think he's created a couple of absurd comedy classics in "Billy Madison" and "Happy Gilmore" and a solid rom-com in "The Wedding Singer," and he was used well as an actor in "Punch Drunk Love" and that James L. Brooks misfire "Spanglish." Good Lord, I even find his rageaholic schtick funny now and again.
But "Zohan" is resolve-testing. It plays like "Norbit" trying to guest-host "Frontline."
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D: 108 minutes; rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, language and nudity.
'You Don't Mess with the Zohan' (The Oregonian, June 6, 2008)
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