Before it left the budget theater for good, I managed to sneak in a showing of You Don't Mess With a Zohan; a film which proved that Adam Sandler still has a faithful fanbase. Despite a shaky (at least by my account) premise, this film still managed to do $100 million at the box office this summer.
Zohan (Sandler) is an Israeli Special Forces Soldier who has grown tiresome of the ever-going few between his people and the Palestines. So he decides to fake his death and move to America to live out his true dream; becoming a hair stylist. If you saw any of the ads for this film, you saw how most of them focused on his crazy antics as a hairdresser. and if you're like me, when you saw them, you second-guessed whether this movie would be any good.
Well it turns out I was partially right. The hair stylist elements of the film are rather unfunny. However, the film is also about the real-life feud between Israelis and Palestinians and how in many ways they are two sides of the same coin. It is this aspect of the film that is unseen in the ads, yet provide some decent material. To explain the dichotomous nature of the film, let me appropriately use a hair metaphor.
This film is like a bleached-blond woman. The woman gets the dye job in order to improve her looks and become more appealing to men. Knowing that a comedic take on the Israeli/Palestinians feud is a tough sell to a mass audience, this film also tries to improve it's look with this hair stylist subplot. Both the dye job and this subplot work on a more primative audience because they are simple, familiar, and appealing. To those with a more discerning eye, both come across as phony, tired, and unappealing. Thier focus is on exposing the true nature of the woman/film. Beneath the shiny veneer is a more intriguing, unconventional choice. In Zohan, that refers to this unique look at how Israelis and Palestinians live in America.
During these moments of the film, we see how similar they are. They share the same bizarre tastes in foods and music. They can laugh and crack wise at each other's stereotypes. And they both suffer from the same ignorant hate from whitebread Americans. It is in these moments that the film rises above its familiar unfunny territory.
It's unfortunate that it takes so long for the film to get to this point. The first part of the film is focused solely on Zohan and developing his character. The initial scenes introducing his character don't work at all. It's not made clear as to why he's a super soldier or a sexual being. It's not until later in the film that I realize so many of his quirks are more cultural rather than unique to him (maybe this is my ignorance revealing itself). Once Zohan hits America, the film takes too much time on scenes involving him in the salon styling and boning old women. There was absolutely nothing fresh about any of that material.
Finally, things start picking up once Rob Schneider, playing a Palestinian taxi driver spots Zohan and tries to have him eliminated. From there the film somehow evolves into the Israelis and Palestinians teaming up to take down a greepy corporate mogul (played by Michael Buffer) who's trying to tear down all of their shops so he can build a mega-mall. While the story may seem like a stretch, it produces some of the best laughs of the film.
This second half of the film is buoyed by a cavalcade of cameos; some from Sandler mainstays and others you would never expect. The best of the bunch is Dave Matthews who has a few scenes playing an uber-redneck. Seeing him play against type is a lot of fun. The same cannot be said for Mariah Carey's guest spot which couldn't have been flatter even if they had been treated with an iron (ok, I really need to stop with the hair metaphors).
One final point I'll mention is the casting of Entourage's Emmanuelle Chiriqui as the love interest for Sandler. The comedy is Sandler's films may be uneven, but he always seems to get really hot women who seem down-to-Earth enough to make it believable that they would be romantically linked to his characters. This holds true once again for Chiriqui who is both beautiful and sweet in this role.
I understand why there wasn't more of a focus on the Middle Eastern conflict aspect of this film, due to its lack of commerciality, but that is the only part of this film that works. I'd like to think that that was the part written by Judd Apatow, who received a co-writer credit on this script, but I can't know for sure. Even if the film couldn't have solely dealt with this issue, the film still could have worked if it had found something better than the hair stylist subplot. Those scenes just drag on and provide nothing new to the audience.
I think for Sandler fans, if they missed this in theaters, they'll enjoying watching this at home. However, most people can probably skip this as the jokes are outnumbered by the duds and the overall plot is just too bizarre to be enjoyed on a simple level. I give Sandler credit for trying something a little different, but this one just didn't cut it. (Get it, cut, hair, ha!) Grade: C
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