You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008)

An Israeli Special Forces Soldier fakes his death so he can re-emerge in New York City as a hair stylist.

Director:

Dennis Dugan

Writers:

Adam Sandler, Robert Smigel,

Stars:

Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chriqui

2 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Adam Sandler	...	Zohan
John Turturro	...	Phantom
Emmanuelle Chriqui	...	Dalia
Nick Swardson	...	Michael
Lainie Kazan	...	Gail
Ido Mosseri	...	Oori
Rob Schneider	...	Salim
Dave Matthews	...	James
Michael Buffer	...	Walbridge
Charlotte Rae	...	Mrs. Greenhouse
Sayed Badreya	...	Hamdi
Daoud Heidami	...	Nasi
Kevin Nealon	...	Kevin
Robert Smigel	...	Yosi
Dina Doron	...	Zohan's Mother (as Dina Doronne)

Storyline

Zohan Dvir works as a Special Agent and lives with his orthodox parents in Israel. He wants to give up this life full of dangerous encounters with Palestinians. While in the process of apprehending a Palestinian activist known simply as the Phantom, he fakes his death, hides in a dog-kennel on a plane bound for New York, and decides to try his hand as a hair-stylist. He is refused employment initially, but when he offers to work for free, Dahlia hires him as a cleaner. When a hair-stylist named Debbie quits, Zohan replaces her, winning over elderly female clientèle, and falling in love with Dahlia herself. Before Zohan could propose to her, Dahlia's landlord, Walbridge, who has been raising rents regularly, hires skinhead goons to terrorize the neighborhood, creates misunderstandings between Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians, and drives them out, so as to enable him to construct a new building which is topped by a roller coaster. When Zohan decides to confront these skinheads, he...

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Plot Keywords:

palestinian | hair stylist | muslim | israeli | jew | 

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Taglines:

Lather. Rinse. Save the world.

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Genres:

Action | Comedy | Drama

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, language and nudity

Details

Official Sites:

Sony Pictures [fr] Sony Pictures [us]

Country:

USA

Language:

English Hebrew

Release Date:

6 June 2008 (USA)

Also Known As:

No te metas con Zohan

Filming Locations:

Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico

Box Office

Budget:

$90,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£1,520,637 (UK) (15 August 2008)

Gross:

£5,200,666 (UK) (5 September 2008)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Columbia Pictures, Relativity Media, Happy Madison Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

113 min

Sound Mix:

SDDS Dolby Digital DTS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Most of the guns used by the Zohan and the terrorists in the film are weapons manufactured by Israeli Military Industries (such as the Uzi submachine gun, Galil assault rifle, and the Jericho 941 and Desert Eagle handguns).

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Goofs

When Zohan is having dinner with his parents, the amount of liquid in his drink bottle changes constantly.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Danny: You don't mess with the Zohan!

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Connections

References Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

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Soundtracks

"All Night Long"
Written by Rick James
Performed by Mary Jane Girls
Courtesy of Motown Records
Under License from Universal Music Enterprises

User Reviews

Would had been great and hilarious with a different script.

Strangely enough, this always had been a movie that I really wanted to see. It looked strangely appealing and hilarious to me and while the movie does appeal and become occasionally a funny one, it still is a heavily flawed movie that almost does more stuff wrong than right.

There is nothing wrong with its main concept, which is crazy and fun and also nothing wrong with its main character, played by Adam Sandler. I only did wish it all would had been part of a different and better movie. The movie as it is right now is lacking too much with its story and its consistency, with just about everything.

It's strange how the humor variates throughout the entire. The one moment it's just plain crazy, while the other it's being a more gross out type of humor. It doesn't even feel like there is a right balance and any consistency between its different comedy approaches. I'm sure that I would had liked the movie way better, if it was entirely like its, totally absurd, first 10 minutes.

It also would had been more pleasant if its story didn't keep changing its priorities every 20 minutes, or so. There often is a completely different focus, as if the story was a compilation of 3 totally different scripts, that got thrown together. It should had made its mind up better about what it wanted to be exactly and not try out- and do so many different things with its story, as it does now.

Because it keeps jumping so much all over the place and keeps changing its approach and focus constantly because of this, the different story lines also don't ever work out well enough. There really were some good ideas to work with here but again, it should had made some better and more direct choices. It either should had been a spy comedy about Zohan versus his archenemies Phantom, played by John Turturro, or about Zohan trying to make it as a barber and save the barber shop from closing down, or one in which he stopped the evil developer from building a mall, or one about the whole Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The movie now instead is featuring a bit of everything in it but nothing ever feels developed and handled well enough. Everything falls sort of flat by the end, since it all feels half developed and wrapped up too easily and really not satisfying enough at all, overall.

The thing I do like about this movie is that's not afraid to make fun of Isreali's, something that's still a bit of a sensitive subject in Hollywood, for the obvious reasons that a lot of the people in power there are actually Jewish. It's nothing new for a movie to poke fun at Jewish people and customs but it is uncommon for a comedy to constantly do so, with its main character and its main plot. It's nothing too offensive by the way. I'm pretty sure that people of Jewish origin, with a sense of humor in them, can still really laugh at some of the situations and comedy elements in this movie.

But really, for every good and fun thing that this movie does, there also is something truly bad. For instance there are a lot of sex jokes in this movie, which I normally have no problem with but the jokes in this movie are just a bit too gross for my taste. Every time that you think that there would be no way that this movie would be doing a certain thing, or would go that far, it actually does.

Another thing that became annoying after a while were its many different cameos. Stuff like this often can take you out of a movie, as is also the case with this movie. It often pauses, just so it can show another celebrities face, for about 15 seconds.

I really do wish that Adam Sandler would do another 'Zohan' movie, since there is so much potential with its character and craziness to do with it. Besides, it probably is the best comedy role he had ever done.

6/10

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