Don't Mess with the Zohan

woody81

http://www.theage.com.au/news/fi ... /1213770783937.html
Philippa Hawker, Reviewer
June 19, 2008

Zohan - with a thick accent, a padded crotch, and a way with the ladies, is a gross comic character, but also a good-natured one

GenreComedyRun Time113 minutesRatedMCountryUnited StatesDirectorDennis DuganRatingstars-3
In Adam Sandler's new movie, you don't mess with the Zohan - the title character, a legendary Israeli undercover operative - but you can take all sorts of liberties with dips. Hideous things are done with hummus, using every conceivable kind of implement - nothing has been left to the imagination. Sticky substances in general are smeared all over this movie, and all over Zohan, a man of comically absurd physical powers, which he employs to fight his Palestinian arch-enemy Phantom (John Turturro).

But Zohan wants to cultivate a different set of skills: he dreams of being a hairdresser, and making the whole world silky smooth. So he fakes his own death and flees to New York for a fresh start. After a few setbacks, he gets his chance in a small salon, where his upfront approach - grotesquely out-of-date coiffure, plus enthusiastic sexual servicing - is a hit with elderly female customers. (His Palestinian boss, Dalia, played by Emmanuelle Chriqui, looks on in elegant bemusement, which is all that is demanded of her character.)

Zohan - with a thick accent, a padded crotch, and a way with the ladies that makes Max Bialystock of The Producers look like a picture of gentlemanly restraint - is a gross comic character, but also a good-natured one. This isn't one of Sandler's simmering, frustrated roles: Zohan is presented as a reluctant Rambo with a dream of peace and bad hair, a love of hacky sack, a commitment to a particular fizzy drink brand and a strong devotion to disco moves. And if you miss a joke, fear not: it will be repeated. Over and over again.

The bad guys, in this movie, turn out to be traditional ones. Treachery is afoot, courtesy of the movie's major villain, a real estate developer who co-opts a bunch of white supremacists to stir up trouble in the neighbourhood and pit Israeli shopkeepers against Palestinian ones. Things work out, of course, to everyone's satisfaction: there are a few political gags that have a veneer of audacity, but in essence, the movie takes risks only with its audience's gag reflex.

Zohan is no Borat: there's something much, much more amiable about the calculated grotesqueries of the movie's low, low comedy, as well as something indisputably light-headed about its triumphant why-can't-we-all-get-along? solution to the problems of the Middle East. The American way, it turns out, is the answer all along.