Zohan Review

You Don’t Mess with the Zohan!

Intro: Calling Adam Sandler a younger, less hairy, Will Feral wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate. They both got their start on SNL, they both have made serious films to flex their acting muscle with solid results, and finally they both seem to have a knack for producing the same film over and over with a new gimmick for the appearance of freshness. So Zohan is finally here but does it fit the formula or is this something special?
Summary: At the films outset you see a rather shaggy Adam Sandler (calling into question the aforementioned “less hairy”-ness”) showing his supposed coolness by shoving a few random objects up his ass and then proceeding to forcefully fire them back out. Zohan is picked up by the Israeli counter terrorist unit to capture a notorious criminal. While on the mission the Zohan fakes his death and goes to America to cut hair and, despite trying to fly under the radar, has the most flamboyant wardrobe ever.

Story For whatever reason the cleverest lines in the film are the ones that are the least funny (e.g. Zohan’s dad telling him “You’re like Rembrandt with a grenade”). However the film boils down to 3 repetitive, unfunny and quickly aging jokes: Sandler Sleeping with very old women, Sandler’s over exposed and obviously stuffed crotch and *groan* humus. But despite my best efforts not to I did laugh at the film at times, it never really won me over, but I didn’t regret seeing it, especially since it was free.
8.0
Acting Warning: anytime the film features a scene with only Adam Sandler and other actors with accents it’s just incoherent. There is no chemistry between any of the on screen characters and I would say that it’s a little bit of a stretch for Sandler to go from a lovable loser to a loveable bad-ass but really this is the same character that we saw in Little Nicky. Towards the end of the film there are so damn many celebrity cameos that you actually get annoyed. (No joke you get about 3 in a minute).
5.5
PresentationThis actually is one of the looking comedies I’ve seen in a while. Some shots are actually fairly clever subtle satires of the Bourne franchise. You do get a lot of shots that look like they came out of a handy-cam and the gross out visual jokes that ruin the film. Really the film can be quite clever when it’s being subtle, it’s only when it goes for the big laugh that it misses the mark, which it does… a lot.
7.9

Overall: 7.1

Closing Thoughts: Zohan is just hard to recommend. The first third of the film has some cool special effects and clever lines, the middle third is surprisingly funny, and the end has just no direction and feels throw together. So you can mess with The Zohan, if you really, really want to.