You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008)
Directed by Dennis Dugan
An Israeli counterterrorism soldier with a secretly fabulous ambition to become a Manhattan hairstylist. Zohan's desire runs so deep that he'll do anything -- including faking his own death and going head-to-head with an Arab cab driver -- to make his dreams come true.
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But (in an inspired comic riff on Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer â which precious few die-hard Sandler fans will likely get) what the Zohan really wants to do is cut and style hair for Paul Mitchell.
He eventually insinuates himself into a salon run by a beautiful Palestinian named Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui), where he sets about Warren Beattying his way through the clientele, a la Shampoo.
Imagine Warren Beatty in "Shampoo" by way of a Jewish Rambo.
In a tip of the hat, or whatever, to Warren Beatty's swingin' hairstylist in Shampoo, Sandler plays a breathtakingly flexible Israeli counter-terrorist agent who's had his fill of fighting Palestinians and longs to retire to a chic Manhattan salon.
Sandler plays the title character as an over-the-top cross between Paul Bunyan, Rambo, and Warren Beatty in Shampoo.
June 5, 2008 - If James Bond was an Israeli commando who secretly aspired to be Warren Beatty in Shampoo then he would be Adam Sandler's title character in the new comedy You Don't Mess With the Zohan .
Most of it is a riposte to and parody of Beatty’s “Shampoo”, about a womanizing hairdresser and the 1968 RFK campaign.
Ernst Lubitsch's "To Be or Not to Be" brilliantly and sophisticatedly skewered the Nazis.
If Ernst Lubitsch could make fun of Nazis in "To Be or Not to Be" (1942) and Charlie Chaplin could parody Hitler in "The Great Dictator" (1940), why shouldn't Sandler go for the brass ring in "You Don't Mess With the Zohan?" Whenever there's something people fear, that they don't even want to think about, that's an opportunity for comedy.
Forty years ago, in “The Producers,” Zero Mostel slept with rich old ladies in order to raise money for a Broadway show; Zohan labors on behalf of a corner store, demonstrating, once again, that small business is the soul of the American economy.
It's a variation on a gag that happily served Mel Brooks in The Producers, and as in that enterprise, the result is more innocent merriment than discomfort for the audience.
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I don’t know if this is quite Harold and Maude for the new generation (there’s no depth provided here), but I do know this is a concept apt to transgress on a teenager’s view of sex and what does or doesn’t make a woman desirable.
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.
The early sections of the film reminded me of when Zucker and Abrahams were still funny, as with Top Secret! and Hot Shots!: you know, goofy and silly but not stupid.
Not quite as inspired as Stephen Chow's work in Kung Fu Hustle but delightfully goofy in its absurdity.
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If Ernst Lubitsch could make fun of Nazis in "To Be or Not to Be" (1942) and Charlie Chaplin could parody Hitler in "The Great Dictator" (1940), why shouldn't Sandler go for the brass ring in "You Don't Mess With the Zohan?" Whenever there's something people fear, that they don't even want to think about, that's an opportunity for comedy.
The early sections of the film reminded me of when Zucker and Abrahams were still funny, as with Top Secret! and Hot Shots!: you know, goofy and silly but not stupid.