"You Don't Mess with the Zohan" (2008) - Movie Review

Awareness of the stereotypes and inside jokes are must for “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” or else the super hero stunts and easy sexual jokes are the only islands of happiness as it had for me. I do not know how much of the jokes I really was lost but the hint of it is a must know factor. Adam Sandler of course is refreshing to not shout, scream and he plays his nice charms innocence side to give this killer commando Zohan the sweetness he needed.

A well built and toned Sandler is a serious strength and super agile human Zohan, a man for whom any attack can be dismantled. The army of Israel depends on him and he delivers. But as someone who has been doing the job of rescue, killing and tackling of terrorist it has become a job of boredom and wants to go for his passion, a hair stylist. After performing his own death under the hands of his nemesis Phantom (John Turturo), he lands in America. He becomes the super hair stylist with a special service of screaming sex to his female customers. So you can judge where the jokes lie.

With a PG-13 rating they manage enough semi nudity not of women but Zohan to raunchy the material on surface level. The film had lots of stunts which in reality was not comic but fun to watch. It was no different as any super hero film might have and as the genre is comedy which will be a known fact while watching, we inflict some humour onto the stunts a bit ourselves. Actually the film appealed more on a regular story telling than a complete comedy. It had smiles but laughs were hard to come by. I liked this sweet guy with sweetness and innocence with lewd acts seemingly casual. That goes a lot to Sandler. He is committed in the character of the Zohan.

Zohan eats hummus for anything and I believe it is comments on the dining choices the Middle Eastern or Israelis have. I cannot know for a fact whether that is the intended comedy out there. I was blank at those and many other scenes. They bring in the issues with Palestine and Israel which I was not sure is the right track for a comedy. Yet it made it clean without any scratches. It did not aid in the comic stand either. Strange that I am so indifferent to the film and I cannot strongly say whether I had a good time or not. It was a lukewarm material with really nice performance from Adam Sandler.

I liked the film and it would have promoted if it had rioting guffaws and a toned down stereotypic pieces. My preference for penning the reviews for the films I watch is the immediate writing of it as soon as it is over. For weird reasons, I do so because I feel that more than the film my retentivity for the thoughts got stay and to do the proper justice to the film itself, it needs to be spitted out as soon as possible. Still there have been films which missed its chances and made it to this space after a while. I am writing the review for this film after six hours and it is kind of tough to think back everything I enjoyed or dragged on. For the most part, Zohan did the job of entertaining me successfully but I hoped it could have been more. It could have been in the class of the comedies Apatow crew has been producing prolifically without any problems at all.