You Don't Mess with the Zohan

Every summer brings with it a few surprises, but for the most part we know what we are getting in every summer movie season- Superheroes, Sequels and Sandler. The 3 S's of summer are like clockwork. This summer, we have Ironman and Hulk; The Mummy 3, Indiana Jones 4 and "Zohan." There was a time when I was the key demographic for Adam Sandler flicks but that day has long since passed. Yet, I still find myself sitting through his movies, almost out of duty than enjoyment. This movie had that all important seal of approval from Judd Apatow, but further digging seemed to show that his involvement ended a few years ago when the script was first written, so who knows. Well, I saw Ironman and I saw Indy 4, so now it was time to get my fill of the third summer S.

The Zohan(Sandler) is an Isreali counter terrorist on vacation. he loves to hackey sack it up and cook in the nude. He is dancing with some very sexy bikini clad girls until his services are needed. Palestinian terrorist "The Phantom"(A depressingly unfunny John Turturro) is on the loose and The Zohan has to capture him again. The problem is The Zohan is sick and tired of war. He is dying to cut and style hair. He even has a 1980s Paul Mitchell hair design book. He wants to leave the army and go to America to cut the hair. He fakes his own death and reemerges in New York with an 80s hair cut, cut off jeans and bad shirts, ready to cut hair. He finds it difficult to get a job, but he is extra confident and sticks with it until he finds work at a Palestinian hair salon. The owner, though, Dalia(Emmanuelle Chriqui) will not let him cut hair until one of her stylists quits and he is the only one left. The next 35 to 40 minutes is one bad montage after another. Zohan takes an older woman, cuts her hair in a very sexual way and then takes her in back and nails her. Oh and The Zohan has a giant cod piece. You won't miss it because it is the punchline to no less than 50 jokes in the near 2 hours of this movie. What follows is a story about Israeli's and Palestinians trying to get along, a big business man trying to put the little hair salon out of business and a lot of shirtless Adam Sandler gyrating in front of, on top of, and behind old women.

Somewhere in You Don't Mess with The Zohan is a funny movie. Somewhere inside the nearly 2 hours are sprinkled laughs. Somewhere between the old person sex stuff and the overuse of hummus are funny scenes involving hackey sacking a cat or some zany over the top action. In the first 25 minutes there are actually a lot of laughs. The laughs are due to the audacity of the action, the balls to the wall nonsense of Adam Sandler as a superhuman soldier. When the story moves to New York and we get bombarded with old person sex, the movie loses that. Instead we get Nick Swardson and Rob Schneider doing the same thing they always do- sucking. There are cameos galore- Chris Rock, Henry Winkler, Kevin James, John McEnroe and Mariah Carey- but the movie loses the funny. Sure there is still this over the top zaniness, but it isn't fun zaniness, it is repulsive. The Zohan is a parody movie of a movie that doesn't exist. Instead of a movie it is a string of sight gags strung together loosely by hair cuts. With the amount of time Sandler spends shirtless and with all his talk of being good at sex, this comes off as a vanity project. This is Sandler's version of Kevin Costner's The Postman. I can't say I hated it, but I can't say I loved it either.

However, I could spend an entire paragraph on Emmanuelle Chriqui. I won't but I will say that this girl may be flawlessly beautiful. The face, the body, the clothes, all of it is perfect. The accent, well, she is hot, what more do you want? Of course there is an inherent problem with the romance in the movie. Why would Dalia, a gorgeous and intelligent woman, ever give The Zohan a shot after the hundreds of 60-90 year old women he nailed in her back room? Is it because eventually he stops being able to get a hard on for anyone else? No, the script demands it so it happens. It is as simple as that. John Turturro on the other hand, could get a whole paragraph of negativity. John John John, what happened? What is it with really talented actors slumming in these crappy comedies? But not only is he slumming, he isn't even doing a good job of it here. He can be manic, crazy and hilarious (see Transformers) but here he is just sad.

Last summer Sandler tried his hand at tacking on a big social message on the end of the horrendous I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry, and it failed miserably, but when he does it here, he nearly succeeds. Denis Dugan, the director of both movies, gets away with it here, because this movie isn't mean spirited. There are stereotypes to be sure, but it isn't one constant stream of terrorist jokes. The moral being we are all the same. We all want the same things- the freedom to do what we love. Whether it is to cut hair, sell shoes, sell electronics, we deserve the ability to do it. The moral is wrapped up in a pretty nice climax involving some pretty funny jokes from Israelis and Palestinians, both and one more silly over the top action sequence to book end the movie nicely. Sandler is a talented actor and he proves that in the very few serious scenes, but he is without a challenge. he could do these kinds of movies forever it seems, but he needs another Punch Drunk Love. "Zohan" has laughs to be sure and actually it made me laugh more than I thought I would, but somewhere there is a better movie and not just extended SNL sketches.

Final Grade: C-