STUDIO: Sony Pictures
RELEASE DATE: June 6, 2008
STARRING: Adam Sandler, Emmanuelle Chriqui, John Turturro, Rob Schneider
WRITTEN BY: Adam Sandler, Robert Smigel
DIRECTED BY: Dennis Dugan
GENRE: Comedy
RATING: PG-13

So who is this Zohan guy that we’ve been hearing so much about lately? In Adam Sandler’s latest comedy, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, his title character, Zohan, is a deadly counter-terrorist for the Israeli army who dreams of becoming a hair stylist. Joke over. Movie continues. It’s how he achieves his dream that becomes the guts of the new comedy. Zohan is, of course, Adam Sandler with a dodgy Israeli accent that sometimes slips into an even dodgier French accent. It’s Adam Sandler in a ridiculous Eighties-style haircut, self-consciously playing it sexy. Zohan certainly feels like a premise arrived after the fifth round of beers, which probably sounded hilarious at the time, but in the cold light of day, it’s not so funny.

We first see Zohan when he’s introduced at a crazy disco beach party in Tel Aviv where he’s busy wowing his fans with outrageous hackey-sack tricks. Later, Zohan, the Mossad agent that he is, dispatches terrorists with finesse, using an arsenal of CG-enhanced fight moves. A hero to his country, Zohan has a secret. In the privacy of his room, while the rest of the world sleeps, he pages through the Paul Mitchell catalogue dreaming of the day he can stop the killing and make "hair smooth and silky."

After leaving the Middle East, Zohan lands in New York City and takes a job at Rafaela’s Salon in a mixed Jewish and Arab neighborhood. There, he becomes a huge hit with the salon’s older clientele, providing something more than the usual rinse and lather in the backroom. In time, Zohan realizes his heart belongs to the Palestinian salon owner, Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui).

At this point it’s clear that the filmmakers have something they don’t want: a romantic comedy. So, to offset the love, Rob Schneider is brought in as Salim, a crazed Palestinian cab driver targeting Zohan. But when that story line runs out of steam, they bring in famous boxing announcer Michael Buffer in the role of Walbridge, an evil corporate overlord who aims to turn the neighborhood into a mall. Both join actor John Turturro, who plays Zohan’s archrival The Phantom, to help support the weak foundation.

While doing press for Zohan, Adam Sandler recently revealed that he originally came up with the concept years ago. Judd Apatow worked on an early draft before Sandler and Saturday Night Live’s Rob Smigel took over the script. The problem is that neither Smigel nor Sandler are feature film scriptwriters in the traditional sense. The result is, as is the case in sketch comedy, a movie that never gets past its premise. Smigel has been a successful writer on SNL for years where he’s best known for creating TV Funhouse and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog for Late Night With Conan O'Brian, and it’s unfortunate to see such a gifted comedic TV writer make his big-screen debut in a dud like Zohan. No doubt, there are better movies ahead for him.

Another long-time Sandler collaborator working on You Don’t Mess with the Zohan is director Dennis Dugan, (Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry), who has adopted a "get out of the way and let Adam do his thing" approach. As a result, Zohan moves in fits and starts, governed very much by Sandler’s haphazard comedic timing.

Sandler himself is a conundrum. Half of the population finds him hilarious while the other half wonders how he got this far. Given Sandler’s successes over the years, his Happy Madison Productions is an entity any studio would love to be in business with since it also involves many long-time friends, fans and collaborators, (Rob Schneider wouldn’t have a career otherwise). After watching ‘Zohan’, it seems like no one on the set dared question whether something was funny or not. Sandler takes over scenes in ways that are occasionally amusing, sometimes shocking, but usually forgettable.

On the brighter side, John Turturro brings a cartoonish quality to Zohan’s nemesis, The Phantom. He’s egomaniacal and over-the-top in a way befitting the material. The movie’s funniest moment is a Rocky montage in which he cracks open two eggs and deposits a pair of baby chicks in a blender, which he then wolfs down for breakfast. Turturro approaches his role not as a comedian but as a comedic actor. He becomes ‘The Phantom’, a character who doesn’t act funny, but one who, with his egotistical ticks and broad gestures, simply is funny. Even after watching the trailer, it’s no surprise You Don’t Mess With the Zohan is a dud. Watching Sandler thrust his crotch in the face of elderly women is shocking and grotesque, but not particularly funny. Sandler himself confessed to having mixed feelings when one old woman who hadn’t read the scene carefully was told she would be licking cream off his nipple. "I have to do what?!" she cried. No doubt the filmmakers will point to this as daring humor, which it is. But daring doesn’t always mean funny.

Setting a broad comedy amid the Arab-Israeli conflict presents a whole range of tricky questions. How genuine is ‘Zohan’’s message of brotherly love when Palestinian fighters are routinely referred to as terrorists in the movie? In 1940, Charlie Chaplin made The Great Dictator as Hitler’s troops were ravishing Europe, but that film ends with a moving and articulate plea for peace. The makers of ‘Zohan’ seem concerned with the conflict only in so far as they can milk a few laughs from stereotypes.

Ultimately there’s really only one question when it comes to an Adam Sandler movie: is it funny? The answer is no. But if you love Sandler no matter what he does, you’ll probably love You Don’t Mess With the Zohan. Everyone else should read the title as the admonition that it is.