“You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” opened in the United States on June 6, 2008, through Sony Pictures Releasing. The film has not aged into a sharper satire.
Directed by Dennis Dugan and written by Sandler, Robert Smigel and Judd Apatow, it runs 113 minutes. It grossed $204 million worldwide against a $90 million production budget. That is a hit by any measure, and it is the fourth Sandler-Dugan collaboration.
The movie is a hit. It is not a good one.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Scrappy Coco Takes a Cargo Hold to New York
Sandler plays Zohanele “Zohan” Dvir, an IDF commando with superhuman traits and a reputation for promiscuity. He is tired of the conflict. He wants to leave the military and become a hairstylist for John Paul Mitchell Systems in the United States. His parents do not approve.
His last assignment is capturing Fatoush “Phantom” Hakbarah, a Palestinian arch-rival who also has superhuman traits. They fight. Zohan fakes his own death and smuggles himself to New York City. In the airplane’s cargo hold he spends time with two dogs and takes the name “Scrappy Coco” from them.
That is the premise. It is thin, but a premise does not have to be thick. The problem is what the film does with it.
Phantom Muchentuchen Opens for Business
Phantom believes he killed Zohan. The Arab world celebrates him. He opens a restaurant chain called “Phantom Muchentuchen.” That is the joke: the enemy’s reward for a murder that never happened is a franchise.
Zohan goes straight to the Paul Mitchell salon and gets turned down. Then he witnesses a traffic collision involving two drivers and a biker named Michael. One driver yells anti-Arab slurs at Zohan. Zohan beats him up. Michael befriends him and takes him to his apartment, where he lives with his mother Gail.
The film keeps doing this. It sets up a scene with real ugly material — the slurs, the beating — and then moves on as if nothing happened. There is no consequence. There is no reckoning. That is this paper’s reading, not a fact the film states. The moment exists to show Zohan is tough and Michael is a friend.
Dalia Hands Over a Chair
Zohan runs into Oori, a fellow Israeli immigrant who recognizes him and promises to keep his identity secret. Oori brings him to a Lower Manhattan area populated mostly by Middle Eastern immigrants, both Israeli and Palestinian Americans.
Oori suggests Zohan try the salon of a Palestinian woman named Dalia. He has no experience, so she only allows him to sweep the salon’s floors without pay. Her salon is in financial trouble. When a stylist quits suddenly, she gives him a chair.
Emmanuelle Chriqui plays Dalia. She is the best thing in the movie, which is not saying much, because the movie gives her almost nothing to do except be the romantic reward and the moral center. She is Palestinian. He is Israeli. They fall for each other. The film treats this as the whole argument.
Michael Klayman’s Apartment and the Rest of the Cast
The supporting cast is a list of people doing versions of things they have done before:
- John Turturro as Fatoush “The Phantom” Hakbarah, the rival with the restaurant chain
- Emmanuelle Chriqui as Dalia Hakbarah, the salon owner
- Nick Swardson as Michael Klayman, the biker who takes Zohan in
- Lainie Kazan as Gail Klayman, Michael’s mother
- Rob Schneider as Salim Yousfobdal
- Kevin Nealon as Kevin
- Mariah Carey as Mariah Carey
- Daoud Heidami as Nasi
- Adria Tennor as the kids’ salon owner
- Yamit Sol as Dorit
In this paper’s view, Turturro is the only cast member who seems to understand what kind of movie he is in. He plays Phantom as a preening peacock, all ego and no doubt. It is a performance that belongs in a better film. Sandler, to our eye, plays Zohan with the same blank enthusiasm he brings to most roles, which works when the script is sharp and fails when it is not. This script is not sharp.
Lather, Rinse, Save the World
The tagline is “Lather. Rinse. Save the world.” That is the movie in five words: a hair-care instruction and a geopolitical mission, jammed together for a laugh. The film wants you to feel the absurdity of a commando who just wants to cut hair. It also wants you to feel something about the conflict. Those two goals pull against each other for 113 minutes.
The satire is not sharp enough to cut. It says Israelis and Palestinians are both people, they both like hair and food and each other, and the conflict is silly. That is a fine sentiment. It is not a movie. A movie needs scenes, and the scenes here are either broad slapstick or soft moralizing, with very little in between.
The film is at its best when it stops trying to say something. The salon scenes have a loose, silly energy. Zohan sweeping floors, learning to cut, flirting with Dalia — those moments work because they are small. The film is at its worst when it reaches for the big statement, because the statement is always the same one, and it never gets more convincing.
What the Box Office Bought
The $204 million worldwide gross against a $90 million budget is the real story here. Audiences showed up. They showed up for Sandler, for the premise, for the promise of a comedy that would not ask too much of them. Our read is that they got a film that asks them to laugh at a conflict and then feel bad about laughing, without ever earning either response.
Metacritic puts the film at 54 out of 100, and the published critical score is 5.4/10. That is about right. It is not a disaster. It is not a success. It is a movie that had a real idea — that the people on both sides of this fight are just people who want normal lives — and then did almost nothing with it.
“You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” is a comedy that does not trust its own comedy. It keeps stopping to make a point, and the point is never as funny or as sharp as the premise. Sandler and his co-writers had a chance to make something genuinely biting about identity, assimilation and the absurdity of inherited enemies. Instead, in this paper’s estimation, they made a movie whose biggest statement is that everyone should get along.
Turturro and Chriqui are worth watching. The rest is a long, loud shrug.
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