826. You Don’t Mess With The Zohan (2008)

Starring: Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chriqui

Director: Dennis Dugan

Running Time: 113 mins

You Don’t Mess With The Zohan is an American film about a special forces Israeli soldier who fakes his own death in order to move to America and fulfil his lifelong dream of becoming a hairdresser.

This film is incredibly irritating, and painfully unfunny. I think that Adam Sandler can sometimes be harshly done by, and he can make funny films if he just relaxes a little bit, but this, unfortunately, is a totally over-the-top, consistently idiotic and ultimately hugely frustrating comedy to watch.

The film plays largely on the premise of Adam Sandler doing a silly accent, and playing a promiscuous soldier who likes hairdressing. Now, the latter is quite entertaining at the beginning, but it really dries up quickly later on. However, the former is one of the most irritating things I’ve ever heard in a film. At first, this accent that he’s doing is almost incomprehensible, and although you do get used to it eventually, it’s so annoying to listen to, especially when you’ve got other actors also trying to pull it off.

Basically then, this film feels (and sounds) a lot like a budget Borat at first, with a foreign man with a funny accent trying to get accustomed to American culture. However, where Borat succeeded was that it went in a risky direction with its comedy, and was so raucously funny as a result, whereas this, although it is full of totally over-the-top comedy, is still all too predictable and watered-down to be properly funny.

I think I laughed once in this film, because the rest of the jokes are all just the same. Either it’s a bit of Israeli-Palestinian humour (which really falls flat on its face) or just another bit of stupid sexual comedy, and is perhaps the demonstration of the most boringly repetitive joke I’ve ever seen in a film.

Finally, there are some terrible attempts at political satire in this film. The writing and overall juvenile atmosphere doesn’t really make the satire seem at all convincing and/or appropriate, however it still tries to say something about the Israel-Palestinian conflict towards the end, which was just the icing on top of the dung cake that is this tediously unfunny film, and that’s why it gets a 2.0 from me.