Sometimes being a film fan isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and usually this is because of Adam Sandler films. This commercially successful comedian is the bane of our existence: he is unexplainably popular form making what summarises as a very average collection of films. For every Wedding Singer there is Click, a film so undeservedly sentimental that I wanted to smack it with a holocaust victim. For every Punch Drunk Love there is I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry: a nasty, hypocritical piece of celluloid and one of the worst films of last year. In his latest comedy, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, Sandler does what we’ve all been waiting for, he tackles the complex political situation in the Middle East in a comedy about a former Israeli hitman trying to make it as a hairdresser at a Palestinian saloon in New York. Yep, sometimes it's a bit of a struggle.
First of all, about ten minutes into the film you realise that actually its concerns have absolutely nothing to do with anything happening on planet earth. Maybe on some far moon of Jupiter, which incidentally appears to be where Sandler has researched his accent, there is a political climate resembling something that is presented here. I don’t watch the news as frequently as I should, but I’m fairly certain no Israeli spends their time wearing tight shorts and arse wiggling for anyone’s pleasure and I’m also quite confident no Palestinian looks like Rob Schneider. But of course, that’s not the point. The film isn’t concerned with anything happening east of the Brooklyn Bridge, it’s interested in how disgusting old people having sex are, how funny a good nob joke is and what a glorious sensation it is to break wind. At the finale, the message of the film seems to be that whatever your religion, whatever your ethnicity, everyone likes a Mariah Carey concert. And for a real measure of how conservative this film actually is, the diva herself shows up for a cameo.
So what we are left with very quickly is just another Adam Sandler comedy and, I’m sorry if I’m being a party-pooper, but I struggle to see why that’s a good thing. Have I missed a meeting or something? When was it decided that a 42 year-old man attracting beautiful women in an eerily Stepford-like way by being disgusting was funny? When was it decided a comedy pitched to be flying in the face of political sensitivities can be this bland and uninteresting? The film isn’t without some laughs, I chuckled occasionally throughout, almost all due to the antics of people other than Sandler himself. When all is said and done, this film isn’t terrible it’s just rather dull, thoroughly unmemorable at ultimately not worth the price of admission. How sad that technically it exceeded by expectations.
First of all, about ten minutes into the film you realise that actually its concerns have absolutely nothing to do with anything happening on planet earth. Maybe on some far moon of Jupiter, which incidentally appears to be where Sandler has researched his accent, there is a political climate resembling something that is presented here. I don’t watch the news as frequently as I should, but I’m fairly certain no Israeli spends their time wearing tight shorts and arse wiggling for anyone’s pleasure and I’m also quite confident no Palestinian looks like Rob Schneider. But of course, that’s not the point. The film isn’t concerned with anything happening east of the Brooklyn Bridge, it’s interested in how disgusting old people having sex are, how funny a good nob joke is and what a glorious sensation it is to break wind. At the finale, the message of the film seems to be that whatever your religion, whatever your ethnicity, everyone likes a Mariah Carey concert. And for a real measure of how conservative this film actually is, the diva herself shows up for a cameo.
So what we are left with very quickly is just another Adam Sandler comedy and, I’m sorry if I’m being a party-pooper, but I struggle to see why that’s a good thing. Have I missed a meeting or something? When was it decided that a 42 year-old man attracting beautiful women in an eerily Stepford-like way by being disgusting was funny? When was it decided a comedy pitched to be flying in the face of political sensitivities can be this bland and uninteresting? The film isn’t without some laughs, I chuckled occasionally throughout, almost all due to the antics of people other than Sandler himself. When all is said and done, this film isn’t terrible it’s just rather dull, thoroughly unmemorable at ultimately not worth the price of admission. How sad that technically it exceeded by expectations.
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