When you get hair made "silky-smooth" by Zohan, you get a little more than you paid for. Well, actually, you get a lot more, including one big bush and a bang. Too bad the latest Adam Sandler vehicle, "You Don't Mess with the Zohan," doesn't promise as good a deal.
Really, it's as messy as getting your 'do done by Zohan (Sandler), a superhuman Israeli commando who sneaks into New York to pursue his hairstyling dream. He claims to be Australian-Tibetan and lives with the voluptuous hornball Gail (Lainie Kazan) and her son Michael (Nick Swardson). His pornography is an outdated Paul Mitchell-style book, and when he attempts to get a job at one of Mitchell's salons, he's ridiculed. Zohan ends up landing a sweeping job at one run by a Palestinian immigrant, Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui), and works his way up (no pun intended) to hairstylist. Faster than he bangs each of them, his elderly lady clientele grows.
Flooded with hummus jokes, gratuitous private parts and enough sexual innuendo to fill Lainie Kazan's cleavage, the project brims with umpteen subplots, some of which are as bland as a chicken shawarma sans garlic, into a film that's otherwise pretty funny in a ridiculously-dumb-Adam-Sandler-and-Co. way. Laughs definitely cook, though, when Zohan's big hair-cutting break turns into a non-stop streak of women coming in for a cut – and, well, just coming. As he rinses their hair, he humps their shoulders, licks their locks and suggestively uses a hose. Then, he takes them in the back room to finish up the job with a "bang-boom."
We're left to think – between this and his crush on Dalia, yet another unnecessary plot device – that he's straight. But with Mariah Carey muscle shirts, tight box-cut swim suits, a very drag-sounding alter ego ("Scrappy Coco"), a love for the disco, and, well, the obvious hairstyling dream, it's hard to disagree with his dad when he calls him a "fagolo." Zohan's either in denial, or "friends" with Ryan Seacrest, because he claims to like only chicks when a foreigner straight-out asks: "What are you, bionic?"
Either way, in a scatter-shot film that seems almost consistently geared toward drunken frat boys, that's the least of our concerns. Sloppily directed and edited, and even with a Judd Apatow ("Knocked Up," "Superbad") credit, this Arab-Israeli nations spoof isn't so silky smooth. Cool and corny action sequences – and a slew of unexpected cameos from folks like Dave Matthews, Mariah Carey and Bruce Vilanch – boost this from typical stupid Sandler fare, but gross-out humor goes as limp as Zohan's erectile-defunct penis and writers lather on the sexual innuendo. Never rinsing, but always repeating.
Which means "You Don't Mess with the Zohan" is just stupid, tiresome fun escalated to above-sky heights, bloated into something bigger than Zohan's bush. C+
Mess'-y Zohan
Read More
Kathy Griffin Keeps on Surviving: Comedian Talks Tour, Longtime LGBTQ+ Allyship and Support From 'Civilian Gays'
Kathy Griffin has been through even more than you probably know. She lost a lung to cancer, lost her mother and lost many of her close friends. In 2020, the [...]
‘Queer Drunk Punk’ Author Zehava Frieman on How Growing Up in Grosse Pointe Park Inspired Her Debut Novel
When Zehava Frieman finally sat down to write “Queer Drunk Punk” in 2021 on the tail end of decades of what she describes as “creative [...]
Go to Church (or Temple), Observe Trans Day of Visibility, Catch a Queer Film, See an Aerial Drag Performance
Spring has sprung and it’s time for all the cute little cubbies and big, strong bears to emerge from hibernation — sunshine and good times [...]
Why Phluid Project Founder Rob Smith Left the Corporate World to Promote Gender Inclusivity
Thanks to the era of “new media,” where no stone is left unturned when it comes to invading the privacy of every public figure from social media [...]
Three Years Ago, Detroit Techno Icon DJ Minx Came Out. Now, She's Living a Life She Never Thought She Could.
Jennifer Witcher is better known as DJ Minx at the Spot Lite Detroit nightclub and coffeehouse, where she saunters in one weekday afternoon in late February in [...]
Fern Fest Women's Music Festival Is Moving, But Staying True to Its Inclusive Roots
Change is in the air for Michigan’s Fern Fest, a six-day women’s music festival that has experienced rapid growth since its first ever gathering in [...]
