So, I knew full well what I was getting myself into before I paid my ten dollars and a Coke the size of Zohan's crotch.
I love virtually every movie genre there is. I'm a movie buff, have over 2,000 DVDs in my collection. With that said, that's exactly why I loved this movie so much. I can understand some of the criticism, it's a brainless comedy chop full of cliché jokes, stereotypes, crude toilet humor, so it's to be expected that it's going to receive a lot of negativity. He has a layer of irony under a layer of tenderness under a layer of irony - with a pool of anger that moves around like Jupiter's Great Red Spot.The critics are out in full force and tearing this movie a new one. Something fogbound in his demeanor takes the edge off - a quality Paul Thomas Anderson used in Punch Drunk Love, in which Sandler played an emotionally overdefended child-man floating through the world in a lyrical bubble. He satirizes his own potency at the same time he peddles it - yet he never falls into the Jerry Lewis mode of naked self-infatuation. He even bridges the gap between himself and the Palestinians who want to kill him. Turturro gives flabbergasting bird-warbles of rage, and even Rob Schneider has moments as a Palestinian cabbie who can't get past the Hezbollah headquarters' automated answering system.īut the movie is nowhere near the class of Sandler's last, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, which in its adolescent way was more powerfully in-your-face against homophobia than even Brokeback Mountain - something most critics missed, perhaps on account of there being other things in your face, like the 600-pound man cutting the cheese with Sandler's head wedged between his legs.īut even at Zohan's most juvenile, there's something mesmerizing about Sandler's messiah fantasies - ego-baths only a major movie star could give himself, like being a sex god, a biblical warrior, and a finicky hairdresser. That said, it was co-written by Sandler, Judd Apatow, and Triumph the Insult Dog's Robert Smigel, and it's often very funny. You Don't Mess with the Zohan is metrosexual camp it's all cartoony slapstick and racial caricatures and look-at-the-ta-tas-on-that-hot-babe reaction shots. This is perhaps understandable: His tryout at a children's salon - involving a better-sit-still admonition complete with a mention of pooling blood - suggests a certain lack of finesse when it comes to the needs of the clientele. He especially loves the pouffy, feathered look that was big around 1985.ĭuring a battle royale with John Turturro's Palestinian super-terrorist, the Phantom, Zohan fakes his death and high-tails it to New York, where no one wants to give him a job styling hair.
(He's serenely generous with his favors.)īut he's tired of war: He dreams of giving up fighting and becoming a hairdresser like his hero Paul Mitchell.
That's the Zohan of You Don't Mess with the Zohan, Adam Sandler's Israeli Mossad super-warrior - master of hand-to-hand-to-elastic-foot combat and a babe magnet who can satisfy harems of hot chicks plus scores of eager ladies over 60. The magazine I write for ran an online item in which men were asked what they'd rather do than sit through the movie, and the answers ranged from eating someone else's booger to being mauled by Michael Vick's pit bulls.Įxcuse me, but I happen to be confident enough in my heterosexual masculinity to enjoy seeing how the female half lives, loves, and wears fabulous clothes - and on my side, I have the Zohan.
Last week on Fresh Air, I spoke of liking the film of Sex and the City- and I stand by that review, even if everywhere I look there are jerks impugning my manliness. 'Triumph's' Master Writes for the Big Screen June 6, 2008