Adam Sandler has been churning out a lot of movies one after another and sometimes we thinking if his movies still hold with a great story. We are afraid that his creative juices will run out soon and all we are left with are a watered down version on his new movies.
Don't Mess with The Zohan is a long name and this intrigue us already. Adam Sandler plays Zohan Dvir here, an Israeli counter terrorist commando who finally gets tired of fighting with the Palestinians lead by Fathoush "Phantom" Hakbarah (played by John Turturro). He want to change his life and leave the world of fighting so stages his death to start life anew as a hair stylist in the United States.
A silly story line with a silly premise with a silly super human character in the Zohan, we would like to raise our hands in surrender. What saved this film for us was the use of great music that echoes throughout Zohan's character. He likes Disco and this reverberates in most parts of the film. A great cast also supports the film to the end but sad to say, most of them are just pushed to the sidelines with silly situations that didn't push their performances to the hilt.
We believe that the premise of the movie is the music, the disco beat, and this is the storyline as well. Underneath the soundtrack, the movie tries its best to be a political statement against the centuries old fighting between the jews and the palestinians. They even went so far to induce a romantic tryst between the two cultures like Romeo and Juliet. Rope in Fathoush as the brother of the Zohan's love interest, how lucky or unlucky can you be?
To add some comedy or funny moments in the film, they went also into some racial stereotypes. We Filipinos are not aware of them here as we know little of their war and we, the Filipino culture accepts this as a way of comedy.
In the end, the movie is something you can watch through on a boring friday night. Something that will tide you over the weekend and maybe forget the film on monday. Because we forget the details of the film, we could watch this film over and over again and think of it as a new movie each time we watched it. A movie marathon staple if you ask us.
