West Bank Story (2005)
Directed by Ari Sandel
A musical comedy set in the fast-paced, fast-food world of competing falafel stands in the West Bank... David, an Israeli soldier, falls in love with the beautiful Palestinian cashier, Fatima, despite the animosity between their families' dueling restaurants. Can the couple's love withstand a 2000-year-old conflict and their families' desire to control the future of the chickpea in the Middle East?
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What critics compared West Bank Story to
That said, "You Don't Mess with the Zohan," while its structure is undisciplined and its story (scripted by Sandler, Judd Apatow and Robert 'Triumph the Insult Comic Dog' Smigel) borrowed from everything from "Barbershop 2" to the 2006 Live Action Short nominee "West Bank Story," has some laugh out loud moments and enough routing interest in Sandler's Zohan to make it marginally recommendable.
But director Ari Sandel (who, amazingly, has an Oscar, for a great short musical he made some years ago called West Bank Story) makes sure the film never takes itself too seriously.
Directed by Ari Sandel, who won an Academy Award for his witty 2005 short film “West Bank Story,” this far clunkier enterprise is a drag from its first moments, when Bianca curtly narrates her high school’s in-group hierarchy of “jocks, geeks and princesses.”
Director Sandel’s eclectic resume includes the Oscar-winning, live-action short “West Bank Story,” a musical comedy about competing falafel stands, and the scattershot documentary “ Vince Vaughn ’s Wild West Comedy Show.”
But Whitman, best known for TV’s “State of Grace” and “Parenthood,” clicks with her co-stars and handles the screenplay’s zingers and the droll voice-over narration her character spouts in this feature from director Ari “West Bank Story” Sandel.