You Don't Mess with the Zohan has as many fingerprints on it as a Middle East peace plan -- and we all know how those turn out.
The script alone is credited to Judd Apatow (the Knocked Up and Superbad architect who specializes in splicing guy-centric raunch with chick-flick sentiment), Robert Smigel (the creator of such cartoonish, boundaries-shredding fare as Saturday Night Live's TV Funhouse) and Adam Sandler, who is unwilling as ever to unshackle himself from either dullard director Dennis Dugan or the gratingly parasitic likes of Rob Schneider.
Clumsy fiasco
The resulting collision of sensibilities may be funnier than much of Sandler's recent repertoire -- high praise, we know -- but it's also a clumsy, scattershot fiasco that's more likely to offend those with astute comedic taste than anyone on either side of the Israeli-Palestine equation.
Is it better than I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry? Good God, people, what could be worse?
Sandler stars as the titular Zohan, a ridiculously prodigious Mossad commando who harbours a secret dream when not demolishing terrorists: To put down his grenades and pick up scissors and a comb to cut and style hair.
Although he's mocked by his parents when he reveals this, he fakes his death in a battle with nemesis The Phantom (John Turturro) and heads to New York City. Once there, he concocts an identity, lands a job at a salon owned by the gorgeous Palestinian, Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui) and becomes a sensation because, as it's said, "Besides the sex, the guy gives a pretty good haircut." (Among the recipients of Zohan's customer service is none other than Charlotte Rae of the 1980s sitcom Facts of Life. Yes, Canteen Boy schtups Mrs. Garrett.)
But to paraphrase a certain mafiaoso, just when Zohan thinks he's out, they pull him back in, and it doesn't take long before he's identified by a Palestinian cabbie (Schneider, as unbearable as an Arab as he was as an Asian in Chuck and Larry) who wants to settle an old score.
If that wasn't enough -- and really, it is -- there's the ruthless Trump-esque land developer who pits the neighbourhood's Jewish and Arab business owners against each other so he can erect a shopping mall in the presumably post-riot aftermath.
Overload though it may be, the everything-and-the-
rinsing-sink-too strategy does mean that for every few gags that misfire, there's one or two that hit.
Still, intercourse with randy retirees and one-liners about hummus can only carry you so far and at an ill-advised 113 minutes it's the movie, not any character, that desperately needed a trim.
Not that the ambition of the filmmakers is unnoted.
As was overheard after one press screening: "Well, at least they tried."
In the Sandler-verse, that's what's called an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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