You Dont Mess with the Zohan Widescreen Rated (PG-13) Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Nick Swardson, Lainie Kazan |SwapaDVD.com

MPAA Rating: PG-13
Content Advisory: Nudity, Adult Humor, Profanity
Movie Release: 2008
DVD Release: 10/07/2008
Format: DVD - Color,Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV - Closed Captioned
Audio Tracks: English, French
Subtitles: English, French
SwapaDVD Credits: 1
Number of Discs: 1
Run Time: 1 hrs 53 mins
Studio: Sony Pictures
Total Copies: 10
Genres: Comedy, Farce
See Also: You Don't Mess with the Zohan [UMD for PSP], You Don't Mess with the Zohan [Blu-ray], You Don't Mess with the Zohan [Widescreen] [Unrated], You Don't Mess with the Zohan [Widescreen] [Unrated]

Judd Apatow teams up with his former roommate Adam Sandler to write a star comedy vehicle for the actor in You Don't Mess With the Zohan, the tale of an Israeli commando who fakes his own death so he can follow his dream -- to be a hairstylist in New York City. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry's Dennis Dugan directs for Happy Madison Productions and Columbia Pictures. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

Adam Sandler - Zohan
John Turturro - Phantom
Emmanuelle Chriqui - Dalia
Nick Swardson - Michael
Lainie Kazan - Gail

Lewis P. (Turfseer) from NEW YORK, NY wrote on 4/25/2009...

No moral equivalence between 'The Phantom' and 'The Zohan'

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

'You don't mess with the Zohan' is a farce about an Israeli Army special operations counter-terrorist soldier who decides to chuck his career and become a hairdresser in New York. Adam Sandler is very funny as 'The Zohan' right down to the perfect Israeli accent. Since this is a farce, Sandler embraces the stereotype of the typical macho, sexually aggressive Israeli male and the type is exaggerated even further through the use of digital effects.

The first half of the film contains some very funny scenes. I was laughing hysterically when The Zohan expresses his great displeasure that his arch-rival, The Phantom, has been set free after a prisoner swap. Watch for the banter between The Zohan and his Commander as Zohan 'negotiates' his way into volunteering for the mission (also watch for hummus joke #2 where The Zohan dips his chocolate bar into the hummus!)

There's a great scene when The Zohan meets his parents. The father scoops hummus with his eyeglasses and praises him for his abilities as a commando ("You're like a Rembrandt with a grenade", his father tells him).

When The Zohan tries to capture The Phantom, his Commando skills are exaggerated to the point of being completely ridiculous. The Zohan can grab bullets and chops guns up with his hands. When the Phantom blows up a marketplace, the Zohan hands one of the merchants a card for 'free government reparations'. There's also a clever scene where the Zohan can swim like a porpoise and catches up to the Phantom who is fleeing in a speedboat.

Before The Zohan arrives in NYC, watch how he gets his name "Scrappy Coco". When he attempts to get his first job at the Paul Mitchell Studio, we're introduced to the running gag of the night vision glasses (when he spies the unhelpful salon employee through the goggles, she's classified as "Bitchy Bitch" but her ass is "good").

The Zohan gains an ally when he saves a gay delivery guy from being beaten up by a surly businessman on Park Avenue. During this scene, The Zohan twists the businessman into a pretzel shape--it's a another running gag that's repeated too often throughout the movie. Another unfunny bit that misses the mark is when The Zohan ends up in the African-American salon and mistakes a wig for some kind of wild animal and wrestles with it on the floor. It was just too out of character for the cool Zohan to do something as ridiculous as that.

The Zohan's old friend from Israel, Uri, who he meets at a disco, proves to be one of the funniest characters in the film. In a most amusing scene, we're introduced to Uri's electronics store and how all the shady characters operate there. Uri's "dreamkiller" monologue is priceless!

Another hilarious moment is The Zohan's dream flashback where a terrorist cuts off his hand and then The Zohan's hand on its own stabs the terrorist in the back. Loved it!

When The Zohan finally lands a job at a salon owned by a beautiful Palestinian woman, there are a lot of sight gags such as the Zohan brushing his teeth with hummus and slow motion shots of him diving to the floor to prevent pieces of hair from dirtying up the salon. The main joke is The Zohan having no compunctions about servicing the old women clients. It's a joke stolen from Mel Brook's 'The Producers' but he takes it a couple of steps further. The idea of the stud having sex with the little old women gets tired pretty quickly.

While the focus remains on The Zohan, the film is funny and keeps your interest. But once the focus shifts to the Palestinian characters, the Zohan begins to lose steam. The writers attempt to draw some kind of moral equivalence between the terrorist Phantom and The Zohan which fails miserably. Where the over-sexed Zohan is ripe for satire, the idea of The Phantom, a bumbling middle-aged terrorist, who deep down would like to own a shoe store, is too distant from reality to be funny. Simply put, there is no such thing as a bumbling terrorist—you cannot make terrorists into buffoons.

One gets a feeling (especially with the Palestinian cabdriver character played by Rob Schneider and his two cabdriver buddies), that the writers didn't know enough about the Palestinian or Arab culture to create reasonable caricatures to satirize. By reducing them all to bumbling buffoons but also linking them to such unsavory activities as building bombs, the humor is lost. It might have been better to draw a portrait of an Americanized Arab family (perhaps focusing on Dahlia's extended family—the Zohan's love interest) which would have created more comic possibilities in the second half of the film.

The second half features a good number of scenes that no longer focus on The Zohan's journey exclusively: the developers coming to the salon, the board meeting, the red neck plotters and Hacky Sack Mania. Contrast that with the first half where the focus was exclusively on The Zohan's struggle.

The Zohan is a clever idea that runs out of steam. The message of the film—why can't people from different cultures get along—is really a misguided fantasy. 'The Zohan' wants to have it both ways: on one hand it glorifies (despite the affectionate ribbing), The Zohan's fight against terrorists; clearly Sandler is on the side of the Israelis. But at the end, he's able to have the Israelis and the Arabs hug each other after turning the Arab characters into harmless buffoons.

Instead of all the silly slapstick, The Zohan could have had a lot more bite. Why couldn't there be more clever stuff like when the White Supremacist tells Walbridge, "you're a rich guy who gets it—you and Mel Gibson!" If there were only more moments like that!