Well, It’s No Worse Than The Sex Scene From Munich | Adam Sandler is a footloose ex-Mossad agent in New York City in You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.
I’m probably not surprising anyone by saying that Adam Sandler’s new comedy You Don’t Mess With the Zohan is a 113-minute armpit fart of a movie. In fact, fans of “classic Sandler” will be relieved to know the star of Happy Gilmore and The Wedding Singer isn’t trying to channel his, um, talents into something weightier along the lines of Punch-Drunk Love or Reign Over Me. No, Zohan cleaves instead to Sandler’s tested-and-true comic formula of funny voices, homo jokes, racial stereotypes, and crotch injuries.
Zohan, in which Sandler plays a scruffy Israeli super-spy who fakes his own death to pursue his dream of being a hairdresser in New York City, does come with a better-than-average pedigree. Though it reteams the comedian with director Dennis Dugan (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Big Daddy), the script was written by Sandler with Judd Apatow (Knocked Up) and Robert Smigel (SNL’s TV Funhouse)—two guys with slightly more sophisticated, if not less crass, ideas about comedy than their leading man.
This fact did not entirely assuage concerns that Zohan would be stuffed with obnoxious and facile depictions of Middle East politics in general and Arabs in particular. After all, the perception of Israel as a plucky little underdog of a nation just trying to hold onto its little island of peaceful self-determination in a sea of hostile, freedom-hating Muslims is increasingly belied by its government’s illegal expansionist policies and by the billions of dollars in U.S. aid that help keep its Arab population disenfranchised. So turning that endlessly bloody, tragic situation into a wacky comedy, especially one featuring a nigh-superhuman Israeli hero, has great potential to take Hollywood’s appalling penchant for portraying Arabs to despicable new lows.
Luckily, Zohan is so unrelentingly stupid and nonsensical that it disarms any objections you might raise to its treatment of real-world issues. The only thing it insults is the intelligence, and presumably people who lay down good money to see an Adam Sandler movie don’t even bother bringing that with them into the theatre.
Compared to his previous work in various quasi-retarded manchild roles, Sandler is downright restrained in the lead, the ridiculousness of his accent offset by the movie’s decision to simulate Hebrew and Arabic by inserting “euuccchhh” sounds into English words. John Turturro, on the other hand, vaults right over the top with his portrayal of Zohan’s archenemy, a tacky terrorist called The Phantom. The “throw everything at the screen and see what sticks” brand of humour runs the gamut of lowbrow, from old-lady sex scenes and pubic hair jokes to riffs on Jewish and Arabic stereotypes (both groups use hummus as a condiment and a dentifrice) to a round of cat hackysack and cameos by everyone from Chris Rock to Mariah Carey to Shelly Berman. It’s pretty hit-and-miss, and certainly too long by about 20 minutes.
The movie further tries to remain non-partisan by having Zohan fall for a beautiful Palestinian salon owner (Emmanuelle Chriqui) and tacking on a subplot in which a ruthless developer tries to run off the multi-ethnic businesspeople of Zohan’s new neighbourhood and turn it into a shopping mall. There’s a none-too-subtle message about leaving traditional hatreds behind in the land of freedom, but the way the affable Jews and Arabs of Zohan make peace is by bonding over their love of America’s top export: pop culture junk.
In that light, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan could serve as a real tool for goodwill in certain beleaguered parts of the world. But they’d do just as well saving their shekels or their dinars and waiting until it comes out on DVD.
