Sandler at his bawdy best
By John DeFore
Austin American Statesman
Let's address the obvious first: Anybody who walks out of an Adam Sandler comedy about Arab/Israeli relations in a huff has only himself to blame for any offenses suffered. Were you really expecting co-screenwriter Robert Smigel, famous for creating Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, and cartoon crime fighters called the Ambiguously Gay Duo to have something culturally sensitive to say on the topic?
Though "You Don't Mess With the Zohan" derives most of its comic intrigue from Middle East hatreds — its hero is an Israeli anti-terrorist soldier who fakes his death in order to pursue a peaceful dream of styling hair in America — its main concession to real-life sensitivities is a scene or two in which the "it's crazy on both sides; we should leave the hate behind" sentiment is expressed about as simplistically as the moral lessons taught by Jackie Chan's anti-gang parable "Rumble in the Bronx."
One fleeting suggestion of self-awareness: As he's defending a notorious terrorist played with over-the-top relish by John Turturro, a Palestinian fighter pauses mid-battle to reasonably plead, "I'm just saying — it's not so cut-and-dried" — and is immediately tossed off a balcony. The scene then moves back to comic territory accessible to Americans who don't read the World Report page, establishing the superhuman prowess of Sandler's Zohan, a cross between Jackie Chan and Neo of "The Matrix" who can dodge bullets, play pingpong with grenades, and do things with a piranha that can't be described here.
Zohan also possesses a peculiar brand of disco-fied cool that, though it wows the ladies back at home, makes him laughable once he escapes to America and establishes a new identity as Scrappy Coco, stylist. Wearing too-short cutoff jeans and unbuttoned shiny shirts, Sandler makes the most of the character's prancing, wiggling (hetero) sexuality; you expect at any moment to learn that he has a secret superpower triggered by the powerful shake of his bootie. He gets a job in a failing salon run by a lovely Palestinian girl (gasp!) and proceeds to shower his plump, middle-aged clients with uninhibited sexual attention while recreating looks from his treasured 1981 Paul Mitchell style book.
There's a story line in here somewhere — something about a greedy developer bent on razing immigrant-owned businesses to build a mall, while Zohan struggles to conceal his identity from a Palestinian hoping to kill him (unsure of how to proceed, the Palestinian and his cohorts call a Hezbollah hotline and wade through automated voice menus) — but it's all subordinate to Sandler's enthusiastic exploration of this weirdly lovable character whose accent he doesn't even pretend to have mastered.
Skeptical moviegoers who find themselves chuckling more than they expected may chalk it up to the contribution of Judd Apatow, who shares screenwriting credit with Smigel and the star; whether it's Apatow's doing or not, the film has an innocent enjoyment of raunch that clicks with Sandler's guilelessness. "You Don't Mess With the Zohan" is big, silly, sex-happy fun that earns belly laughs even from viewers who have no idea why an Israel/Lebanon Hacky-Sack championship is supposed to be funny.
