film: You Don’t Mess with the Zohan!

Before I get started on the review I have to let you guys in on a little secret dear readers. And that is apart from people talking about the credit crunch, nothing irritates me more than badly conceived film titles. The last one to really get my goat was the James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. Who’s ever heard of a quantum of solace, and what exactly do you do with one? Do you drink it, ride it or marry it? Or maybe some combination of all three?

Now I tried to get to grips with the title by dissecting it into bits, but that didn’t help much either. This is because A quantum can either be a large quantity of something, like umbrellas or black forest gateau, or the smallest quantity of electromagnetic radiation.

If the confusion about the Quantum wasn’t enough, then blast the infernal title writers for piling on the solace. Because for most people solace means consolation, but it also means pleasure or amusement. Again there’s a massive difference. If you’re best friend’s mother died, it would be perfectly socially acceptable to go and console her, but you wouldn’t want to take her go-carting or absailing. Unless you were on drugs. But then you’d be arrested.

Perhaps I’m being harsh on Quantum of Solace. It isn’t the worst offender of its kind. There’s a film out this year called The Midnight Meat Train. Honest to god. But the one that really cracks me up is the 2005 flick The Sisterhood of The Travelling Pants. Tagline: “Laugh. Cry. Share The Pants.” I don’t want to share the pants. I’m actually very comfortable in my own pants thanks very much.

Anyway, all of this has been on my mind recently because I’ve just watched You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, which certainly falls into the annoying film title camp. Starring Adam Sandler, it tales the story of a sort of Israeli James Bond who fakes his own death in order to become a hair dresser in New York. Unfortunately for him, he can only find work in a Palestinian hair salon. Oh…and his old enemies are after him.

I don’t think I’d upset anyone by suggesting that Adam Sandler films have traditionally aimed low. Happy Gilmore, Billy Madisonand The Waterboy, whilst funny, could have been conceived by an idiot child with attention deficit disorder. Ironic really, considering that most of these films were about idiotic man children with attention deficit disorders. But You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, or just Zohan to it’s friends, is a different kind of beastie altogether. It’s a Sandler comedy with brains. Well, some brain to be precise.

Much to his credit, Sandler has attempted to make a teen comedy about the Middle East crisis. A heady cocktail of hairdressers and terrorists. And whilst he never quite hits the mark, you’ve got to give an A for effort. The central character, Zohan, is great fun, not only blessed with quasi superhero powers but also large dollops of oestrogen, as happy putting piranhas down his swimming trunks as he is styling a 60-year-olds perm. Much like rival high concept movie Tropic Thunder, the film also boasts a spectacular budget which gives way to some stunning set pieces.

But my friends (and I’m sure you saw it coming) high budget doesn’t always make for good comedies. This certainly applies to this picture. It feels all too often like an action adventure which is fine, but not what I signed up for. This is great news if you’re 15, but not if you’re a cynical 31-year-old who still gets annoyed by badly conceived film titles. 3 stars.

For the best of the rest:

THe NY Times:
Let me be blunt: “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” is the finest post-Zionist action-hairdressing sex comedy I have ever seen. That it is the only one I have ever seen — and why is that? what cultural deficiency or ideological conspiracy has prevented this genre from flourishing? — does not much detract from my judgment.

The Telegraph:
How does he do it? Every Adam Sandler film fills me with dread. I see his silly, thumpable face on posters and groan to the heavens. And then, whether it’s 50 First Dates, Spanglish or - say it isn’t so! - the post-9/11 weepie Reign Over Me, I find myself bewildered and thinking: hmm, this really isn’t so bad. Can it be that Adam Sandler films are OK not in spite of him, but because of him?

The Guardian:
Adam Sandler is an actor who used to make me break out in hives, or at least a cold sweat. But after his decent performance in the comedy Click, I started to come round. This is a silly, crass comedy about a badass Israeli commando who secretly longs to be a hairdresser specialising in 1980s stylings. He comes to New York to follow his dream and finds that he can only get a job in a Palestinian-owned salon, and falls in love with the owner Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui). Sandler’s Israeli and Jewish observations are often very funny, and there is one really outstanding, but curiously undersold, gag about how a group of people saying: “No-no-no-no” sounds like a motor-boat. I’m afraid I have no excuses for Rob Schneider as the Arab cab driver.