HEY, I have a great idea for a movie. Get this: Adam Sandler stars as a superhuman Israeli counter-terrorist. We’ll give him a sweet name, something like “Zohan.” And when I say superhuman, I mean it, like he can catch bullets with his hands. But get this! He really wants to be, wait for it … a hairdresser! It’s his dream!
So he fakes his death and pretends that his Palestinian arch-nemesis kills him, who’s played by … uh … John Turturro! Yeah! Then he goes to America, bones every old woman in New York City, and actually does become a famous hairdresser, all while narrowly avoiding death at the hands of Rob Schneider and gentrification at the hands of Dave Matthews. No, Dave Matthews doesn’t play himself–he’s going to act. Again! Goddamn, this is awesome.
We’ll have a Mariah Carey cameo, too! And John McEnroe! Sandler will unite American Jews and Arabs by talking about how he wants to bang Laura Bush and then he and Turturro will sing! Are you listening to me?! Get my fucking agent on the phone.
You know, if the weirdness stopped here, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan would still qualify as a really strange movie. But it doesn’t. The writing trio of Sandler, Judd Apatow and Robert Smigel (known also as Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog) took 1990s dumb-boner humor, blended it with a 2000s pop-culture-savvy sensibility and ran it all through an insano meat grinder.
“You’re from Australia!” a kindly mother says to Zohan as he tries to hide his Israeli identity. “Well, it’s got to be much better there without that apartheid!” Zohan nods eagerly. “Yes, the weather is much better!” he replies. Zany!
I can’t decide if I should laugh or be offended. Mostly, I’m just confused.
Here are some elements of the world of Zohan: Friends pass the time with a game called Catsack (like Hacky-Sack, but with a cat); Chris Rock is a Jamaican cab driver; Mariah Carey is actually really funny; Sandler’s erections get talked about a lot, and I mean a lot, sometimes causing dogs to lick their own balls. Oh, and hummus is used for everything–including toothpaste.
To drop in one last bit of crazy into the mix, Zohan has a fair amount of commentary about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Joke fodder is more or less funny and standard (“I can’t take it anymore! … All the hate on both sides!” says Dalia, Zohan’s Palestinian-born love interest. “Yes!” Zohan responds enthusiastically. “Especially yours!”), and the real villain turns out to be Mr. Walbridge, a wealthy grey-haired douchebag trying to destroy and conquer the Middle Eastern community in Manhattan by hiring goons to stir up resentment between Jews and Arabs.
So, is You Don’t Mess With The Zohan funny? Sort of. It’s definitely better than any other movie Adam Sandler has given us this decade that was not named Punch Drunk Love, and there’s enough obviously-Apatow shtick in here for more than a few belly laugh moments (see Carey’s appearance, a Rocky parody and any point when Mel Gibson is referenced). The gross-out humor of old, while still tending towards the ridiculous, is a little more refined than we’ve seen in years past. So that’s good.
At the end of the day though, You Don’t Mess With The Zohan is a little too crazy for its own good, and it makes a mess of itself with its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink strategy. It doesn’t help that the movie overstays its welcome at 113 minutes. And it really doesn’t help that Sandler’s wang takes up a good fifth of that time.
You Don’t Mess with the Zohan is no stinker, but it’s no masterpiece either. See it, if you feel movies are too predictable these days, or you’re in the mood for a throwback to the ’90s but don’t want to actually take Happy Gilmore off the shelf. Or if you wonder what would happen if Sandler, Apatow and Smigel all dropped acid in front of their keyboards (because there’s no other comprehensible way this script could’ve materialized). If that doesn’t interest you, you probably don’t want to mess with … er–don’t see this movie.