You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (***)

Adam Sandler gets in touch with his Jewish roots—and applies highlighting—in this tale of an Israeli commando whose secret dream is to become a hairdresser in the model of the great Paul Mitchell. (Unfortunately, his inspiration is a Mitchell book illustrated with 1980s styles.) I confess I’ve not been a fan of most of Sandler’s star vehicles, which typically combine Screenwriting 101 plotting, schoolboy humor, and blubbery sentimentality. Though it was directed by Dennis Dugan, Sandler wrote the screenplay with Robert Smigel, creator of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, and the ubiquitous Judd Apatow (Knocked Up). The result isn’t necessarily a more adult comedy, but perhaps his collaborators kept his worst excesses in check. Considering that the Dugan-directed I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry was a 110-minute gay joke, I feared this would be more of the same. The topic does come up, but the movie is at least as much of an action-film parody as a hairdresser comedy. The Zohan winds up pursuing his dream on the same street in New York City as some Palestians, so the Arab-Israeli conflict is also the subject of some mild satire.

The Zohan is a caricature of male virility. He not only does one-handed push-ups, but no-handed ones. And in the salon, he’s a caricature of Warren Beatty in Shampoo, providing the middle-aged female clientele with a full-service experience. (For a PG-13 movie, this is about as raunchy as it gets.) It would have been interesting to see him wind up with one of the chubby, middle-aged housewives more permanently, but the love interest is more conventionally young and slim. Since Sandler and Dugan have never met a cliché they didn’t like, everything about the story is pretty conventional. When Sandler’s not doing his comic schtick, it can be tedious. A primary storyline, in which a big developer wants to buy up the block Zohan’s salon is on seemed nearly lifted from Barbershop, another comedy about hair. Still, it’s not as corny as the very worst of Sandler comedies, like, say, Big Daddy.

You have to be a fan of broad humor to like this movie. It’s the sort where Zohan can tell his American friend that he’s “half Australian, half Mount Everest” and it’s not questioned. And there’s a running gag about hummus, which has more uses than Windex does in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I’m usually annoyed by such silliness, so maybe Sandler’s accent, or the input of Smigel and Apatow, made it seem clever enough that I didn’t mind.

IMDB link

viewed 5/28/08 (screening at Ritz Bourse); reviewed 6/5, 6/6, and 6/15/08