You Don't Mess with the Zohan
directed by Dennis Dugan
written by Adam Sandler, Robert Smigel, and Adam Sandler
starring Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chiriqui, Rob Schneider, Lainie Kazan, Ido Masseri, Michael Buffer.

I've never been a Sandler fanboy because his juvenile squabblings have never been edgy enough to edify my zen comedic sensibilities. He's always been a bratty seven year old playing with dog turds in the dirt. Still, I recognize in his screen persona a capacity for a more expansive characterization than those his audiences are familiar with. In this film, despite the inspired lunatic bent of the character, he is more nuanced. He has created a character who breathes and seems throughout the film to be genuine and necessary.

The film doesn't maintain its manic intensity throughout. Once it becomes realized we are headed for an attempt at social commentary, all the momentum that has built up is sorely lost. Still, there's enough here to make for a credible and entertaining film, however low one's standards for such a thing might be. There's drama, there's Sandler's obsession with his manly bits, there's his enterprise of making all the geriatric clients who come into the salon, and there is the sexy owner of the salon named Dalia (Chiriqui). It all ads up to an engaging first hour but gradually the jokes dry up and all that is left is a sad, and wholly preposterous ending that is cheap, easy, and throughly ridiculous. Certainly a film like this has no place for realism yet it's understandable why it ended like it did although the final message is quite reprehensible and seems to go against the edicts of the production.

Zohan is a supremely gifted Israeli counter-terrorist who has an unblemished record. He's also bored with all the killing and wants desperately to move to America to work for Paul Mitchell and make the world "silky smooth." He has an outdated Mitchell hairstyle book and copies one of the haircuts which make him look positively anachronistic. He finds his chance for escape when battling with the Phantom (Turturro), who assumes Zohan is dead when he fails to emerge from a lake. He leaves to fulfill his dreams but runs into several snags including being laughed out of Paul Mitchell because of his haircut and dry humping dance moves. He moves on and eventually lands at Dalia's salon where he manages to get an unpaid gig sweeping up hair which he does zealously. When a girl quits, he seizes his

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