You Don't Mess With the Zohan (2008)

Finally, another Adam Sandler film I like! YAY! The third recorded film starring Adam Sandler that I like, it truly is a miracle. The first one was The Wedding Singer, then Billy Madison, and now You Don’t Mess With the Zohan. And how many don’t I like? Happy Gilmore, The Waterboy, Just Go With It, among others. So, not a great ratio on Sandler’s part, but still-this movie is good, a fact that truly took me by shock. There was so much that should’ve gone wrong with this film. Still directed by Dennis Dugan, still starring Sandler, still produced by Judd Apatow, so where did this movie go right? An unknown writer named Carlito Cabardo, that’s where. Not even notable enough to have his own Wikipedia page, Cabardo joins writers Sandler, Apatow, and Robert Smigel (who are responsible for films such as Happy Gilmore, Little Nicky, and Eight Crazy Nights) and punches up this film to decency. Not hilarity, but decency. And for that, Mr. Cabardo, I thank you. The plot of the film concerns Israeli counter-terrorist Zohan (Sandler), who is the best in the business, but secretly wants to be a hairdresser and work for Paul Mitchell. So during a fight with The Phantom (John Turturro), Zohan fakes his own death and flees to America. While in America, Zohan finds work at a hair salon run by a Palestinian woman named Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui), and finds a friend in Michael (Nick Swardson), all of whom revolve around this completely insane race war (I think) that makes ABSOLUTLEY no sense when I was watching it. But I didn’t care. There were parts of this movie that I wasn’t too fond of, but there were jokes in this film where I was laughing out loud. The only other Adam Sandler movie where that has happened was during the song from The Wedding Singer, and here it happened when Sandler took a shot at Mel Gibson. Since Sandler is Jewish, and Gibson’s anti-Semitic comments have made him truly infamous, the joke in there is just filled with pure hatred, and it is hysterical. I won’t spoil it, but-dang, that joke was hilarious. Either way, the film is filled to the brim with jokes, some are hits, some are misses, but there are more of the former than the latter, something unseen for a Sandler film. You can consider this the light in the cloud. And when Jack and Jill comes out on DVD, I have to watch that, and then the cloud will darken again. YAY!
7.5/10