You Don't Mess With The Zohan

Introduction

Adam Sandler is a cinematic oddity - his films, with the exception of Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk Love, never receive universal critical praise, normally garnering mixed or negative reviews. This doesn't stop them from making millions of dollars at the box office and the Sandler bandwagon keeps on rolling. The latest from the Happy Madison production line is You Don't Mess With The Zohan.


Teaming up with Director Dennis Dugan for the 4th time, Sandler co-wrote this screenplay with Judd Apatow and fellow Saturday Night Live alumnus Robert Smigel. Zohan is the elite of the elite in the Israeli military, the kind of guy who can take out a terrorist cell by himself, win a tug-of-war with a bull and dismantle a machine gun in the blink of an eye. He can do no-handed push-ups, tie people into knots and accurately fire a hacky sack from between his arse cheeks but grows tired of the fighting. When sent to recapture his nemesis The Phantom (John Turturro) who has been freed in a prisoner swap, he fakes his death to pursue his dream of becoming a hairdresser in the Paul Mitchell salon in New York. Rejected because of his 1980's haircut, he can only find work downtown, in a Palestinian hairdresser's in a neighbourhood divided between Palestinian and Israeli immigrants.

As he has no experience and calling himself Scrappy Coco, Zohan is only allowed to sweep hair by his attractive Palestinian boss Dahlia (Emmanuelle Chriqui) but gets his break when a stylist leaves and proves popular with the elderly clientele because he can cut and style hair, make their knees quiver whilst washing their hair and 'services' them before they leave.

Meanwhile property tycoon Walbridge (Michael Buffer) is trying to drive the neighbourhood out of business so he can build a mall with a rollercoaster and Zohan is recognised by Salim, a Palestinian taxi driver (Rob Schneider), who has harboured a grudge against Zohan since he stole his goat.

Video

A stellar picture which is let down by some less-than-convincing green screen work; the picture is as good as you'd expect and hope for from a brand new film on Blu-ray with excellent skin tones, contrast levels and colours.

Audio
The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 is excellent, nicely balanced and, whilst it'll never be a demo disc, does the job extremely well with clear dialogue and good surrounds.

Extra Features

The disc contains two cuts of the film, the Theatrical and Extended versions, the latter is only about four minutes longer though there are also some small audio changes which were edited out to get the PG-13 rating.

There are two commentaries, the first with Adam Sandler, Robert Smigel, Rob Schneider and Nick Swardson is a back slapping effort where they all have a good time without imparting much information as they are too busy joking around. The second with Dennis Dugan is a tedious waste of time as, although he reveals something about the shoot, there is plenty of dead air: on occasion he says "I don't have anything to say about this scene" and seems to want to have fun rather than provide anything meaningful.

There are 15 featurettes (5 that are exclusive to the BD) running at 86 minutes in total, presented in HD, which are of variable quality and interest. They cover the stunts, Dugan's attempt to communicate with the Spanish cast, outtakes and casting friends. Together they make a fairly good making of though some of it does seem self-indulgent and made for the sake of making it.

Conclusion

I've never been a fan of Adam Sandler's comedies - the ones he writes and stars in, I do have time for The Wedding Singer - yet always hope that he'll make one that I'll like and will laugh at. He has the raw talent as his appearances on SNL and career-best performance in Punch Drunk Love show but his comedies tend to be lazy gross-out affairs that barely raise a smile.

With You Don't Mess With The Zohan it appears he wants to contextualise the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and show the futility of the fighting when the two peoples have so much in common. This film is a really odd way of going about it, Zohan has such a thick accent that he sounds more like Borat than someone from Israel and having Rob Schneider in 'tan face' playing a Palestinian doesn't help. Aside from the 'jobs for the boys' aspect of the film, with cameos from people including Chris Rock, Kevin James, John McEnroe, Mariah Carey and George Takei, the film struck me as overlong, racist, sexist and, by showing bad guys with turbans and throwing bombs, defeating the very point it was trying to make. It's all well and good ridiculing evil to subvert it as Charlie Chaplin did to devastating effect in The Great Dictator but when a film is just as crass as this the message gets lost in all the crude humour.


Talking of crude humour, you get that in abundance. There is plenty of Zohan 'making sticky' with octogenarians, disco-ing, playing hacky sack with a cat, gyrating his crotch and showing off his big bulge (something that Ben Stiller did to better effect and funnier in Dodgeball), catching a fish in his naked arse crack and constantly displaying his love for hummus.

The acting is at such a low level that it's barely worth mentioning - Michael Buffer has been in many films, playing himself perfectly well but is terrible playing a Warren Buffet-type property magnate; Chris Rock does a terrible Jamaican accent (even Adam Sandler isn't sure whether he's supposed to be from Jamaica or Haiti!), Mariah Carey's cameo is regrettable and John Turturro is much better than the performance he gives here.


This is so clearly not my type of film and, even though I wanted to like it and live in hope that Sandler will make a comedy that I'll find amusing, I hated it and found nothing remotely enjoyable about it. If you are a fan of Sandler's work such as Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy or I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, you'll no doubt laugh at this from beginning to end and wonder what the hell I'm complaining about. If you like the film you will undoubtedly get more enjoyment from the special features than I did. Obviously, if you don't like those films, avoid this.