Following the box office success of Borat, comes You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, another middle-eastern political satire with a generous dose of explicit sexual references. Unsurprisingly, Zohan, the protagonist, is Adam Sandler, the super comedian who’s starred in countless inane films like I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry and 50 First Dates. Fans of the actor can look forward to seeing Sandler speaks middle-eastern accented English throughout the film.


The Plot

Zohan is a Jewish pacifier who was born with the body of a superhero. 3 years into serving the Israeli military against the Palestinians, he gets fed up with his job even though he’s been extremely adept at defending his country.

Despite having a body that is stronger than steel, he has a completely different plan for his future and wants nothing more in his life than to “style and cut hair”, an ambition that draws homosexual taunts from his friends and parents. But far from being gay, Zohan is an obnoxious man, with an overwhelmingly high sex drive, who is obsessed and unabashed about having sexual intercourse with women.

During a showdown with his Palestinian nemesis, The Phantom (John Turturro), Zohan plays dead so that he could account for his absence and sneak into New York, the home of his idol, Paul Mitchell, to pursue his dream of becoming a famous hairdresser. Determined to start life anew, he changes his own hairstyle and identifies himself under the alias of Scrappy Coco. As he has no experience in cutting hair, apart from his own and 2 dogs, nobody at the salons wants to hire him.

Zohan’s luck starts looking up when he interfered in a street dispute where he goes on to impress and befriend a biker, Michael (Nick Swardson), while exchanging blows.

Unfortunately, Zohan’s past soon caught up with him on the same night at a club where he bumped into his hometown friend, Oori (Ido Mosseri), and later, indignant Palestinians who he’d offended in the Middle East.

Courting Controversy

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will be outraged at the many instances of real and simulated animal cruelty depicted in this film – a cat gets kicked around mercilessly by a bunch of grown-ups, 2 newly hatched chicks are indifferently swallowed alive and a cow is treated as a punching bag, just to name a few.

The film never lays off the stereotypes. Fat and old women, who make up the clients of Zohan’s hair services, are portrayed as sexually needy as they readily submit to his sexual advances. The Arabs living in the USA are typecast as speaking with heavy middle-eastern accented English and holding down low-paying jobs as construction workers, electronic salesmen or taxi-drivers. They also get subjected to insults as terrorists.

Celebrity Sighting and Caricature

After repeatedly seeing imprints of pop diva Mariah Carey’s face on Zohan’s t-shirts, the well-endowed singer finally makes a guest appearance in the film as herself towards the end of the movie at the hacky sack tournament.

Ruthless business magnate Mr Walbridge (Michael Buffer) , together with his flame with the proportionate chest to hips ratio, bears an uncanny resemblance to Donald Trump and his wife Melania Knauss-Trump.

Popular References

To make up for the lack of plausibility in the characters and storyline and inject a slice of life into the movie, contemporary topics like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the US presidential election, popular social networks myspace , facebook and the new media technologies like youtube and bluetooth are exchanged in conversations between the characters in order to strike a chord with the viewers and elicit some more laughter from them.

Verdict

You Don’t Mess With The Zohan is an unapologetically annoying film with copious distasteful sexual references that get repetitive after a while.

Anyone is likely to squirm uncomfortably at unpalatable jokes; Zohan brags about having the biggest bush on his manhood that offers women cushioning during his servicing their hair.

Although it advocates living in peace and harmony regardless of race and religion, its negligence to animal treatment and overt disrespect to women in general qualifies it as politically incorrect, which is key to it being a riotous entertainment. You’ll dig it if you’re a typical fan of American comedy for it’s a packed with slapstick, trigger-happy scenes.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Movie Details

Opens: June 19

Movie Rating: NC-16

Running Time: 113 mins

Language: English

Cast: Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Nick Swardson

Director: Dennis Dugan

Images credited to www.rottentomatoes.com