You Don't Mess With the Zohan... Because He Makes a Bad Film

Movie Review: “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.”

I saw this movie about a week ago, and was not impressed. While the premise of an ex-Israeli super soldier who becomes a hairdresser sounded very bizarre, I’m a huge fan of Adam Sandler, and consider him to be one of the top comedy actors from the 90’s generation (probably second only to Jim Carrey). However, even with Sandler at the helm ― in both the fact that he was the lead actor and also that his production company Happy Madison released the film ― the movie was tough to get through. In fact, much of what was funny about the film was just how bad it really was. It was filled with stereotypical jokes about Israelis and Arabs, and tried to turn a two-thousand year conflict into a comedy premise. Now I’m all for comedy, but I don’t think the Israeli-Arab wars are the right thing to joke about. On a plus side, there were some humorous cameos, including: Chris Rock, Henry Winkler, Kevin James, John McEnroe, Mariah Carey and George Takei; also, Michael Buffer, the guy who says “lets get ready to rumble!” before boxing or wresting main events, had a small but significant role, and Dave Matthews plays a racist hillbilly. I’d wait until this gets released on DVD; or better yet, wait for it to be shown on television.