Considering how repetitive it is, You Don't Mess With the Zohan is intermittently fresh and amusing in a low-down yet schmaltzy way. It's basically a one-note, one-rhythm ethnic comedy: a series of riffs on Israeli machismo and Middle Eastern tensions scored to Mediterranean disco. At 113 minutes, the movie bloats, and the humor wears thin, but it's still one of Adam Sandler's sturdier vehicles. That's consumer guidance for Sandler fans - not high praise.
He plays the title character, an Israeli commando who fantasizes about being a hairdresser and fulfills his dream when he fakes his own death and flies to New York. He takes the name "Scrappy Coco" from a pair of dogs he befriends in the cargo hold. He describes himself as an Australian-Tibetan and starts learning his trade at the bottom, sweeping floors for free for a beautiful Palestinian salon owner in lower Manhattan.
At the center of the shenanigans is Sandler's view of Israel's street-and-beach culture as, well, a combination of Australia and Tibet - astounding masculine self-confidence and hedonism mixed with exotic flavorings. Zohan's athletic and military prowess provides the chutzpah. The hedonism derives from his belief that sex is a natural vitalizing agent that should be exploited as much as possible. (That is, until true love hits - and demands exclusivity.) And the exoticism is cooked up, semi-uproariously, from John Travolta movies of the 1970s and 1980s.
