You Don't Mess With The Zohan (2008) Movie Review

At one point Adam Sandler was a funny comedic actor, through his success on Saturday Night Live, to his first few films such as Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. He inhabited a very harsh comedic rage and timing, which was both hilarious and frustrating. Once in moved over to characterization of stereotypes, which started painfully with The Waterboy, for some reason Sandler’s comedies have gotten worse, but made more money. Initial thoughts are “go figure,” but he has a niche of fans that flock to his films and as long as they are making money, he is going to keep on rolling them out.

Point in case with his latest stereotypically unfunny You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, which is a awful film that should make a lot of money and either have Sandler getting his other scripts or a sequel greenlit.

The film follows an Israeli super counter-terriost agent employee by the Mossad named Zohan (Sandler), who always saves the day and feels no pain. Tired of all the killing and the continuous conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinian, Zohan fakes his own death to his arch nemesis The Phantom (John Turturro) and escapes to New York City. Once on the plane to New York, he changes his identity, and slobbers over a Paul Mitchell catalog yearning to for his real dream of becoming a hair stylist. After arriving in the Big Apple, Zohan changes his name to Scrappy Coco and begins to look for work in a hair salon. He finally lands a job at a small salon run by a beautiful Palestinian named Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui). Zohan highly sexual tone of cutting hair woos his customers, which mostly include elderly women. The finale of the hair appointment has each going to the back room for sex as appreciation from their stylist Zohan. After being noticed by a shady cab driver (Rob Schneider), The Phantom is informed that Zohan is still alive, which leads him to New York for a one on one showdown.

Sandler produced and co-wrote the script for this film with SNL alum writer Robert Smigel and the recent dud delivering Judd Apatow. The writing is really a blueprint just for Sandler to do whatever he wants with the role. Ditto for the directional power from Dennis Dugan, who is also a Sandler regular. This film’s stereotypical jokes fall flat and just become offensive rather than poking fun at stereotypes in general. A better comedy called Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay did a better job as a comedy poking fun at stereotypes. You Don’t Mess With The Zohan is just not funny in any sense; it even tries to have animal brutality to garner laughs, which is more mean-spirited than humorous. The over-sexual zealous of the Zohan character is fiercely pounded in the viewer’s head scene after scene in repetitiveness. There is also no need to go into the hummus element of this film. The worst part about this disaster of a film is that it drags and drags for nearly two hours, which includes a lousy sub-plot of a corporation wanting to shut down the salon. Even at 80 or 90 minutes long, this film would still have drug along due to lack of substance and wit.

Sandler does not do his typical role of being loud and crude. As Zohan, he got into great shape, and dons a horrible Israeli accent. At least he is not playing the same character that he always does in his comedies, but his performance is still nowhere near amusing or humorous. John Turturro is incredibly over the top as Zohan’s nemesis The Phantom and the beautiful Emmanuelle Chriqui never seems comfortable as Dalia. Typical of Sandler, there is a small role for his best bud Rob Schneider as a taxi driver as well as brief cameos, which include Mariah Carey, Kevin Nealon, and George Takei.

For Adam Sandler fans, this film shows the actor in a different role, and by the recent box office receipts it shows that the Sandler fans are flocking to this one. You Don’t Mess With The Zohan is a really bad comedy, maybe the worst film of the summer. However, the fans are making it a hit, which means that there will probably be more Sandler projects on the way.