You Don't Mess with the Zohan

You Don't Mess with the Zohan is a 2008 American satirical action comedy film directed by Dennis Dugan; written by Adam Sandler, Robert Smigel, and Judd Apatow; produced by Sandler and Jack Giarraputo; and starring Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Nick Swardson, Lainie Kazan, and Rob Schneider with supporting roles by Kevin Nealon, Ido Mosseri, Dave Matthews, Michael Buffer, Charlotte Rae, Sayed Badreya, and Daoud Heidami. It is the fourth film to include a collaboration of Sandler as actor and Dugan as director. The film tells the story of a superhuman Israeli counter-terrorist commando who fakes his own death in order to pursue his dream of becoming a hairstylist in the United States while contending with a crooked businessman, a superhuman terrorist arch-rival, and the grudge of a certain taxi driver.
Produced by Happy Madison Productions, You Don't Mess with the Zohan was released by Columbia Pictures in the United States on June 6, 2008. The film was a box office success, grossing $204.3 million worldwide from a $90 million budget. Despite this, however, the film received mixed reviews.
Plot
Zohanele "Zohan" Dvir is an Israeli counter-terrorist commando with a widespread reputation for his promiscuity and superhuman traits. Despite his success and popularity in Israel, he has grown tired of the everlasting conflict in his country; he dreams of leaving his military career behind to become a hairstylist for John Paul Mitchell Systems in the United States. When he reveals this ambition to his parents, they dismiss and mock him, urging him to continue his military service.
For his next mission, he is tasked with capturing his long-time arch-rival: Fatoush "Phantom" Hakbarah, a Palestinian militant who also possesses superhuman traits. After engaging Phantom in a one-on-one fight, Zohan fakes his own death and subsequently smuggles himself onto a plane to New York City. To disguise his true identity, he cuts his long hair and adopts the alias "Scrappy Coco" after two dogs (Scrappy and Coco) whom he shared the flight with. Phantom's supposed success in killing Zohan garners him much fame across the Arab world, leading him to open the "Phantom Muchentuchen" restaurant chain.
After arriving in the United States, Zohan immediately seeks out a job at the local Paul Mitchell salon, but becomes a laughing stock after inadvertently humiliating himself in front of the stylists. He then tries to find employment at other salons, but is consistently turned down due to his lack of experience. Later, Zohan witnesses a traffic collision involving two motorists and a cyclist named Michael. One of the motorists starts bullying Michael and yells anti-Arab slurs at Zohan, who promptly beats him up. Michael, a young Jewish American, subsequently befriends the homeless Zohan and takes him in at his apartment, where he lives with his mother Gail. After Zohan moves in, he and Gail begin to have sex on a regular basis, much to Michael's disapproval.
At a disco, Zohan encounters a fellow Israeli immigrant named Oori, who runs a shady electronics shop. He recognizes Zohan as Israel's famous superhuman soldier and vows to keep his true identity a secret before bringing him to an area in Lower Manhattan that is predominantly populated by other Middle Eastern immigrants, including Israeli Americans and Palestinian Americans. At Oori's suggestion, Zohan attempts to secure a job at the struggling salon of a Palestinian woman named Dalia. Due in part to his lack of experience, she only allows Zohan to sweep the salon's floors, informing him that he will not receive any pay due to her salon facing severe financial difficulties. When a stylist named Nadira unexpectedly quits, one of the customers asks Zohan to cut her hair. He accepts and gives the customer an unusually intimate but exceptional haircut, finishing the job by having sex with her in the bathroom. Zohan's reputation as a sexually charged stylist spreads rapidly among the deprived elderly women of Lower Manhattan, causing Dalia's business to prosper. Through Zohan's efforts, Dalia is able to manage her rent payments in full, upsetting a corporate businessman named Grant Walbridge, who has been trying to buy out all of the local tenants on the block so that he can build a massive mall with a rollercoaster.
Eventually, Zohan is identified by a Palestinian-American taxi driver named Salim, who recognizes his face while he is dropping off his passengers in front of Dalia's salon. Salim bears a grudge against Zohan due to a past incident between the two that ended with Zohan stealing Salim's beloved pet goat in retaliation for being spit on during a confrontation. Shortly afterwards, Salim meets with his friends Hamdi and Nasi, and convinces them to help him kill Zohan. After unsuccessfully attempting to get in touch with Hezbollah, Salim contacts Phantom, who is living lavishly in Amman, Jordan. He threatens to publicly disclose the truth about Zohan being alive, but Phantom makes a deal with him and prepares to come to the United States to find Zohan himself.
Meanwhile, Zohan has fallen in love with Dalia. He expresses his feelings and comes clean to her, as well as to Michael and Gail, about his true identity. After Dalia rejects Zohan due to his history of service with the Israeli military, he understands and decides to quit working at her salon, hoping to keep her safe from any inter-ethnic strife. He later confronts Phantom in a championship Hacky Sack game sponsored by Walbridge. However, the confrontation is cut short as Zohan departs after he is suddenly informed of the Middle Eastern neighborhood being attacked by unknown assailants.
As their businesses burn, Zohan calms the Israelis and the Palestinians, as both sides are blaming each other for the violence. As they all gradually discuss their issues, Zohan makes peace with Salim. When Phantom appears, he confronts Zohan, who refuses to fight after having been deeply inspired by Dalia's pacifism. Dalia then discloses that she is Phantom's sister, and convinces her brother to cooperate with Zohan against the arsonists, who are revealed to be a group of white supremacists led by a certain James T. O'Scanlon on Walbridge's payroll. Walbridge hired the group to instigate an inter-ethnic riot in the Middle Eastern neighborhood in order to facilitate the building of his new mall on top of the damaged buildings. As he works with Zohan to save the block, Phantom admits that he always wanted to be a shoe salesman rather than a terrorist. Although the racist arsonists are defeated and Walbridge is arrested by the police, the overexcited Phantom accidentally destroys all of the remaining shops on the block with his superhuman screams.
With the Israelis and Palestinians now working together, the block is rebuilt and transformed into a collectively-owned mall. The mall becomes home to Phantom's new shoe store as well as Oori's relocated electronics shop. Salim starts a goat-riding business after Zohan returned his pet goat to him, and Michael becomes a hairdresser. Zohan and Dalia, having now married, open a beauty salon together. Zohan's parents visit from Israel and approve of his new job and lifestyle before his father requests that he cut his hair, which Zohan happily does.
Cast
Cameos
Production
Sandler, Robert Smigel, and Judd Apatow wrote the first draft of the script in 2000, but the movie was delayed after the events of 9/11 because those involved felt that the subject would be too sensitive. Apatow left the project after the first draft in 2000 to work on his show Undeclared and had, for the most part, not been involved in the project since. The film is based in part on the story of Nezi Arbib, an Israeli soldier who after his service moved to southern California and opened a hair salon. Sandler trained with Arbib and his brothers, also former soldiers, for two weeks to learn hairstyling and work with clients. The movie features elements that first appeared in the SNL sketches "Sabra Shopping Network" and "Sabra Price Is Right", which starred Tom Hanks and were written by Robert Smigel. They originated lines such as 'Sony guts' and 'Disco, Disco, good, good'. The first sketch is also notable for featuring one of Adam Sandler's first (uncredited) television appearances while the second featured Sandler, Schneider, Smigel and Kevin Nealon in supporting parts. Robert Smigel worked with Sandler on past films including Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, and Little Nicky, but this was the first time in which he was credited for helping to write the script. He was also an executive producer on the film which allowed him to further contribute to the movie's comedic sensibility. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz commented that the movie was known in Hollywood circles as "the Israeli movie". Haaretz also noted that while "Israeli actors were rushing to audition [for the movie]," the response among Arab actors was far from enthusiastic. (Emmanuelle Chriqui, who played Zohan's Palestinian love interest, was raised as an Orthodox Jew.) The film poked fun at the popularity of hummus in Israeli culture. In the movie, characters used it to brush their teeth and as a method to douse the flames of a fire, as well as a hair care product.
Soundtrack
Rupert Gregson-Williams composed the film's score, which he recorded with the Hollywood Studio Symphony at the Sony Scoring Stage in April 2008. The soundtrack contains many songs in Hebrew, mostly by the popular Israeli band Hadag Nahash, the psychedelic trance duo Infected Mushroom, and Dana International. The film features "Strip" by Adam Ant, "Look on the Floor (Hypnotic Tango) (Angel City Remix)" by Bananarama, the Ace of Base songs "Hallo Hallo" and "Beautiful Life", the Rockwell song Somebody's Watching Me and Mariah Carey songs "Fantasy" and "I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time".
The soundtrack contains (near the end) music re-arranged for the movie by Julius Dobos, based on the song "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja" from the Bollywood movie Disco Dancer (1982) starring Mithun Chakraborty.
Reception
Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 37% based on 190 reviews. The site's consensus is that the film "features intermittent laughs, and will please Sandler diehards, but after a while the leaky premise wears thin." Metacritic gives the film a rating of 54 out of 100, based on 37 reviews—indicating mixed or average reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B− on scale of A to F.
John Podhoretz, in The Weekly Standard, wrote that the movie has a "mess" of a plot and features, "as usual for Sandler, plenty of dumb humor of the sort that gives dumb humor a bad name, but that delights his 14-year-old-boy fan base." But the film also has an "unusual" amount of "tantalizing comic ideas" so that "every 10 minutes or so, it makes you explode with laughter." Entertainment Weekly gave the movie a C+ grade, calling it "another 'mess' from Sandler" which is, unlike Monty Python, a "circus that never flies".
On the positive side, Time called the film to be a "laff scuffle". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, and called it "a mighty hymn of and to vulgarity, and either you enjoy it, or you don't." Ebert admitted "I found myself enjoying it a surprising amount of the time, even though I was thoroughly ashamed of myself." David Edelstein of New York Magazine went as far as to say "Adam Sandler is mesmerizing". A.O. Scott of The New York Times said it was "the finest post-Zionist action-hairdressing sex comedy I have ever seen."
Box office
You Don't Mess with the Zohan grossed $38 million on its opening weekend, ranked second behind Kung Fu Panda. , it reached a US tally of $100 million. The film grossed $204.3 million worldwide.
Home media
The film was released on DVD on October 7, 2008, with a 2-disc unrated edition, a single-disc unrated edition, and a theatrical edition, as well as a Blu-ray edition and UMD for PSP. It has sold over 1.2 million DVD units gathering revenue of $26 million.
References
External links
2008 films
2008 black comedy films
2000s English-language films
Columbia Pictures films
Happy Madison Productions films
Relativity Media films
Films directed by Dennis Dugan
Films set in Israel
Films set in New York City
Films shot in Israel
Films shot in Los Angeles
Films shot in Mexico
Films shot in New York City
American interfaith romance films
Israeli–Palestinian conflict films
Films about hairdressers
Films about Jews and Judaism
Films about Islam
Films with screenplays by Judd Apatow
Films with screenplays by Adam Sandler
Films with screenplays by Robert Smigel
American political satire films
Films produced by Adam Sandler
American black comedy films
Films scored by Rupert Gregson-Williams
2008 comedy films
2000s American films