Jun 29 2008
Film Review: You Don’t Mess With The Zohan
Starring: Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chriqui
Director: Dennis Dugan
Grade: C
You can always count on Adam Sandler to bring about laughter in original roles. This time around, Sandler plays an Israeli counter terrorist, Zohan. His arch nemesis is the Phantom (John Turturro). After Zohan is fed up with the constant war and violence, he seeks out his dream to be a hair stylist. He meets a few new friends in America in Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui, Michael (Nick Swardson), and Oori (Ido Mosseri). Michael gives Zohan a home in New York after Zohan defends him in a little scuffle. There Zohan meets Gail, Michael’s mother. Zohan later meets Oori, an electronic store owner who is a huge admirer of Zohan from the old country. Finally, Dalia is the owner of a beauty salon who gives Zohan a chance a achieving his dream of “making people silky smooth”. Those of you that are Adam Sandler fans would already assume that he brought his old pal Rob Schneider along as well.
For the most part, the film was outrageous. Every now and again, Sandler will bring a film of this magnitude silliness. Zohan is this acrobatic foreigner that cannot feel pain. Sounds dumb right? However if this film was written by anyone other that Adam Sandler, the film would have failed. Again and again Sandler has brought a comedy with a ridiculous premise, and still delivered a film that you will want to watch again.
There were a few jokes in the film that were repeated at nausea such as their obsession with hummus and Zohan’s oversized crotch. The film pokes fun at the Middle Eastern stereotypes as well as the American view of all Middle Eastern people being terrorists. During the film, you hear phrases such as “go back it iraq” when the person that this is directed to is not ever from Iraq in the first place. Although most of the jokes are about Palestinians and Israelis, director Dennis Dugan and Adam Sandler are directing their message towards Americans. This just like “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” when the audience was given a message to view gays as normal people. In this film, we see how ridiculous we are when we stereotype. There are many countries in the Middle East that are very different from one another.
I believe that Dugan and Sandler were successful in this film. It was another day for those two. Remember they brought us Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy, and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Judd Apatow (40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Pineapple Express) also helped write the script. One real critcism over the movie was it’s repetitive nature. Some of the jokes just became obnoxious as the film went on. What was funny at the beginning or even the middle of the film, was not longer funny as time went bye. Adam Sandler of course was great, even though his accent was not believable. John Turturro in my opinion was probably the best actor of the film. He has so much versatility in his acting ability that he can play just about every role. Will this film win an Academy Award? The answer is no. This however is not their intention, they want to bring films that we are going to have fun watching. Having said that, I would not place at the top of the Sandler list with Happy Gilmore and Big Daddy. It’s Sandler though, so regardless of where it stands amongst the others, it was still hillarious. This is already on my list of DVDs to one day own.
