Our hope that Adam Sandler will return to the hilarity of "Happy Gilmore" and "The Wedding Singer," is the primary reason nonsensical, inept garbage like "You Don't Mess with the Zohan," exists.
I saw "Zohan" with the same jaded optimism that sent me to the theater for the lame 2006 summer movie "Click," where Sandler finds a magical remote control that can fast forward through the boring parts of his life. Not even the somewhat imaginative premise could save it from banality.
Then there was last summer's poorly conceived attempt to apologize to GLAAD for all of Sandler's past homosexual jokes with last summer's incompetent and culturally irresponsible "I Know Pronounce You Chuck and Larry."
Now, one summer later, Sandler pokes fun at the Israeli-Palestine conflict by playing a Mossad Counter terrorist agent pursuing his dream of styling hair.
The character sends up action film conventions by making Zohan an invincible Rambo-type action hero who catches bullets with his nostrils and fish with his buttocks. He also swims faster than a Sea-Doo and kills men with his own severed hand.
If that last part doesn't make sense, it doesn't in the context of the film either. Nothing does. There is no cohesion, no attempt at suspending disbelief and zero respect for the medium of film or the audiences who drop cash at the box office, clinging to the dying hope of a late-nineties Sandler revival.
Whenever I see a film as terrible as "Zohan," I surf the web looking for anyone with a differing opinion. While on that search, I came across reviews that used the term "film" in their descriptions.
Well, since you can't tell if a movie used a digital camera or an actual 35 mm film camera, it's time to start using the word as a qualifier.
A film has a plot. A film is a 90 minute narrative with basic storytelling structure. In Zohan, there is no structure, no plot; it's just a painful two-hour long series of sketches filled with poor taste for the sake of poor taste. He has sex with old women, he proves his manliness by letting a piranha nibble on his niblets and the only way he knows he has feelings for the stereotypical love interest is that he loses his sexual prowess towards old women. You know a filmmaker lacks talent when he uses the absence of an erection to show true love.
Sandler gets paid millions to make this dreck and he does so because he thinks we like it. He and the studios see the big opening weekends and think this is what we want. When in actuality, the only reason the film opens well, is the hope of something better.
I saw this film in a packed movie theater in the front row. Out of sheer boredom, I turned to look at the other patrons to see their reaction. I could practically see myself in their glossy eyes. I even heard one teen turn to his friend and ask, "Was that funny?"
No. Not even remotely and I think Sandler knows he doesn't have what it takes anymore. He's not stupid. Even he can see how terrible "Click," "Chuck and Larry," "Big Daddy," or "Mr. Deeds" were. Why else would he stoop to poking fun at a conflict that has seen millions of innocent men and women killed? It's because he'll try anything to get his thunder back. We need to stop being his personal sounding board and I think last weekend's box office receipts are a good indication that we have started.
Normally, a $40 million opening weekend would be impressive, but the fact that Dreamworks Animation's "Kung-Fu Panda" trounced "Zohan," shows that audiences are ready for something more fresh and innovative than Sandler has to offer.
We can only hope that Sandler and the studio executives are paying attention. We want funny "films," not sketches that would be rejected on Saturday Night Live.
