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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: You Don't Mess with the Zohan

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#1 of 1 Posted 6/2/08 10:55 PM

From harveykarten Posts 744 Last Nov-19
To All [Msg # 23165.1 ]

YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN

Columbia Pictures
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B
Directed by: Dennis Dugan
Written By: Adam Sandler, Judd Apatow, Robert Smigel
Cast: Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Nick Swardson, John Turturro, Mariah Carey, Henry Winkler, Talia Shire, Sayed Badreya, Lainie Kazan, Shelley Berman, Alexander R. Luria, Alec Mapa, Danny Abeckaser
Screened at: AMC Lincoln Square, NYC, 6/2/08
Opens: June 6, 2008

When you knock out a movie as crude and vulgar as “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan,” you’d better have an A-1 entertainer in the leading role. Not a problem. Adam Sandler, perfect for the role and perhaps one of our country’s top five comic actors, sheds the nebbish/mentally-disturbed demeanor he was saddled with as borderline psychotic Charlie Fineman in “Reign Over Men” and bench-warming nerd Bobby Boucher Jr. in “Waterboy” to emerge as a combination Spiderman and Israeli James Bond, helped quite a bit by Judd Apatow’s writing talent (you’ll guess which scenes came from his pen) and from Adam Sandler’s fertile imagination. Directed by Dennis Dugan as though the helmer told the crew to take off in all zany directions and stepped aside, “Zohan” goes for the belly laughs while squeezing in sentiment in both a romantic attachment of the superhero and a political fantasy: “See, Arabs and Israelis can all get along in the same neighborhood as long as they’re thousands of miles away from the Middle East.”

The forty-one year old Brooklyn-born Sandler plays an expert Israeli commando, one who can catch his enemies’ bullets in his nose, cut enemy machine guns to pieces with some karate chops, catch rocks thrown at him by children, using them to sculpt little animals to the delight of the tikes. What’s more he can leap tall buildings in a single bound, crash through glass windows without suffering from as much as a shard, and douse major fires using the spicy Arabic dip known as hummus instead of water. As an unlikely hairdresser in a New York City salon, he draws older women by the scores not only by the “silky smooth” styles he creates for them, but more important by the joys he offers them in the back room after creating each coiffure.

Zohan Dviri (Adam Sandler) has apparently spent the first half of his life in Israel, praised for his incomparable performances as an invincible commando. Fed up with endless fighting, he dreams of becoming a hair stylist in the U.S. When apparently killed by an Arab fighter, Phantom (John Turturro) in the waters bordering a Tel Aviv beach, he fakes his death, smuggles himself aboard a New York bound plane by hiding inside a dog kennel, talks Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui) the owner of a salon, into letting him style women’s hair, and sets up residence in the home of Michael (Nick Swardson) and Michael’s horny mom, Gail (Lainie Kazan). Processing women of a certain age in more ways than one, he becomes as popular as Warren Beatty’s George Roundy in Hal Ashby’s “Shampoo,” but his joy is marred, as he is sought not only by Salim (Bob Schneider), a Palestinian cabdriver in New York whose goat he stole back in Israel, and Phantom, who has flown to the Big Apple to finish the job he thought he accomplished in Tel Aviv.

“Zohan” has everything but the kitchen sink, including a plot by a corporate bigwig to set Palestinians and Israelis against one another in order to take over their small stores and develop a neighborhood-busting mall. Production notes state that several Arab Americans who were hired by the studio were quite reluctant to participate in a film with actual Israelis, and no wonder: in the best line of the picture, a humiliating one to be sure, the Israeli-Americans try to convince the Arab-Americans with whom they share their neighborhood that “We have a hard time here: people dislike us too.” “Why so?” counters the Arab. “Because we look like you,” responds the Israeli.

You don’t have to be a fan of Happy Madison’s Adam Sandler to go for the movie. It’s enough that you like the sort of tasteless humor associated with Judd Apatow, whose hand was in “Knocked Up,” “Superbad” and “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.” Adam Sandler’s Israeli accent is on the heavy side, making some of his dialogue difficult to understand, but who cares? If a scattering of nudity, a number of tasteless jokes, a few ethnic, lifestyle and ageist stereotypes are your thing, you’ve come to the right place.

Rated PG-13. 114 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: You Don't Mess with the Zohan

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