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List Price: $19.94 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 34659
Released: October 7, 2008 |
| Our Price: $1.25 |
| Used Price: $0.46 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Comedy superstar Adam Sandler is back - and funnier than ever - as The Zohan, the finest counter terrorist agent the Israeli army has. That is, until he fakes his death and travels to Manhattan to live his dream...as a hairdresser. Now this skilled fighting machine who used to clip bad guys is out to prove he can make the cut as a top stylist. All goes silky smooth until his cover is blown when he's recognized by a Palestinian cab driver (Rob Schneider). Now, The Zohan must fight to live a peaceful new life in New York in this razor-sharp action-packed comedy from Adam Sandler, Robert Smigel, Judd Apatow and Dennis Dugan.
Description of You Don't Mess With the Zohan (Rated Single-Disc Edition):
If You Don't Mess with the Zohan feels like an extended and crazed sketch from Saturday Night Live, there are reasons for that. Zohan's star and SNL alumnus Adam Sandler is joined by several fellow cast members (in uncredited cameo roles) from his years on the NBC show. But Sandler also co-wrote the film's absurdist script with SNL veteran writer and sometime-performer Robert Smigel. Echoes of a few of their classic skits on the show--built around high-strung Israeli characters obsessed with disco and selling junk electronics out of a New York shop--are in revisited in Zohan and are a lot of fun to see again. Zohan is unbridled nonsense thrown at the wall, but with a sunny disposition that proves surprisingly persuasive. Sandler stars as an Israeli intelligence operative who fakes his death to reinvent himself in New York City as a hairdresser. Putting the lie to assumptions that any man in that professional field must be gay, Zohan routinely provides raucous sexual favors for all of his older female customers. The sight of bottles of gels and hairsprays falling off shelves while the indefatigable Zohan pleasures randy grannies on the other side of a salon wall is pure SNL, and is funnier than it might sound. The silly story involves an old, Palestinian enemy of Zohan, the Phantom (John Turturro), showing up in Manhattan, but everything is really leading to a Big Apple version of the resolution of Israeli-Palestinian conflicts we'd all like to see on a large scale. The film is almost instantly forgettable, and there are many times it veers toward the dumb, but it also sells itself well as a nutty concept. --Tom Keogh
Stills from You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (click for larger image)
You Don't Mess With the Zohan (Rated Single-Disc Edition) Reviews:
Really funny 
2009-11-02 - Okay so let me get this out of the way before I even go into a decription or review, I'm not the biggest Adam Sandler fan, I've seen plenty of his movies and I really hate when he plays the same moronic character all the time, there are exceptions to this and I have to say Don't Mess With The Zohan (just Zohan for short) is definately one of the better ones in my opinion. This movie is so over the top, it doesn't even try to be serious and thats not a bad thing. I found myself laughing many times through out this movie, and every time I thought I had seen it all something wackier would happen in the next scene.
Adam Sandler plays an Israeli Special Forces soldier Zohan Dvir, who is really good at what he does, but is tired of fighting and wants to come to America to become a hairdresser, when he tells his parents of this they laugh at him. So Zohan decides to fake his own death on his next assignment where he is to hunt down his Palestinian nemesis (The Phantom) played by John Turturro. After his faked death Zohan stowes away in the luggage compartment of a plane where he gives himself a haircut, as well as the two pooches he's sharing a cage with Scrappy and Coco, this is where he gets his American name from (Scrappy Coco). Once in America Zohan tries to get a job at the Paul Mitchell Salon but is laughed at, eventually he ends up working in a small time shop run by a Palestinina woman named Dalia played by Emmanuelle Chriqui. With his unusual style and ways with the older women Zohan turns this little shop into the talk of the town. Zohan has to deal with an angry business man (played by Michael Buffer), an ex-enemy who recognizes him (Rob Schneider), white supremacists the leader played by James O'Skanlon, and the return of the Phantom who had become a local hero in his country after he thought he killed Zohan. The madness goes on and on.
This movie is so over the top, and Adam Sandler is great as Zohan in this movie who is practically super human it's ridiculous but in a good way. I saw the movie over Netflixes streaming service, and would urge anyone who has this service and has not seen this movie to check it out, I give this movie a 4 out of 5 which considering comedies are not my favorite type of movies shows how much I did enjoy it. One final note this movie may not be suitable for children so use caution.
One comedy you won't forget
2009-10-04 - It takes alot to make me laugh,and "You don't mess with the Zohan" had me on the floor.Its not a perfect comedy,but its different.Zohan is a supperhero with unbelievable strenght,but wants to cut hair in the USA.
This movie really has its moments
Tried to hard to be funny... 
2009-09-28 - Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1ZTLQKOMDO90C
Horrible, even for an Adam Sandler movie 
2009-08-15 - Horrible. I won't even waste my time writing any more than that. If you still see it anyway, I warned you...
Great Talents, Abused
2009-07-15 - I would like to point out that I think Adam Sandler is a great comedic and acting talent. He has displayed it before. ("50 First Dates" comes to mind.) However, it is a shame that he abuses his talents so effusively and intolerably as he does in "You Don't Mess With the Zohan."
With the talents involved, this should have been a much greater movie. In my opinion, even its frequent laughs and its flirting with an admirable "Dropping of old hatreds/Peace in the Middle East" theme, are not enough to redeem the serious base impurities in which this movie is so thoroughly steeped.
The movie's premise is rich with promise: THE premiere, elite Israeli commando fakes his own death in order to pursue his dream of becoming a peaceful hairdresser of all things! The premise itself is worthy of a good laugh. This caricature is largely well executed and, considered independently from the movie's flaws, exhibits a great comedic ability on the part of Mr. Sandler and others responsible for it.
Unfortunately, the movie is also rampant with extreme, at times graphic, impurity and the banal scatological (bathroom) humor worthy of the most anal obsessive 8 year-old. This style of humor unfortunately drowns out the far greater and more enjoyable humor of which Adam Sandler is capable, and even periodically displays in this movie.
Furthermore, the sexual mores (actually, the lack thereof) in this movie are EXECRABLE. The title character literally humps everything that moves in this movie (and a few things that don't). Unfortunately, this statement is not a hyperbole.
No character in this movie, male or female, seems to care--despite being completely aware--that the Zohan is having sex with LITERALLY every woman who will hold still long enough. Even though at one point the Zohan flirts with the idea of monogamy, no one has enough dignity in their own person to even MAKE NOISES at requiring monogamy with them.
All religious standards aside: Are those who made this move COMPLETELY unaware of the rampant AIDS, hepatitis and other STD epidemics that have swept the world in the last 40-50 years since the sexual revolution?
I am no prude. In fact, as a Catholic Christian, I see and understand sexuality within marriage to be a GREAT gift from God. As a physician I see and deal with a full range of human behaviors every day. Unfortunately I also have to deal daily with the consequences of my patients' misbehaviors, frequently the misuses of the gift of sexuality. I help patients deal with the ramifications of these abuses on a daily basis as well. This movie is downright irresponsible in this regard, EVEN IF one takes the sexual misbehaviors of its characters as a hyperbole.
An aside here, to Lainie Kazan and Charlotte Rae--WHAT WERE YOU THINKING (?) when you took your parts in this movie! How far have you fallen?! Shame on you! You are both far, FAR better than this. Stop it!
I am sure that the preceding review will be deplored by many, and thus reduce my reviewer rating. So be it.
