It's just Zo not funny

VERDICT: Israeli, raeli rubbish

ALWAYS good when a film title offers the audience some sound advice.

And that’s never been more true than with You Don’t Mess With The Zohan—’cos it’s a sentiment that I would like to echo as strongly as possible.

Along with: You Won’t Laugh At The Zohan, You Won’t See A Less Amusing Film Than The Zohan, and You Should Really Give The Zohan The Widest Berth Possible. Because He’s A Complete And Utter A**e Nugget And His Film’s Absolute Flipping Guff.

Potato

By now many of you will have already guessed this movie can only star one person.

The one and only Mr Adam Sandler.

After solving the whole gay marriage issue in I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry, he has found a new political hot potato to tackle—in what could never be accurately described as the medium of comedy.

So brace yourselves for the world’s first gross-out, frat-boy, buttocks and intercourse-based funfest about (drum roll please) the Israel-Arab conflict. Yep. Really.

Zohan (Sandler) is an Israeli anti-terror agent who fakes his own death while battling his arch enemy The Phantom (John Turturro).

The scam allows him to move to New York and fulfil his dream of becoming a hairdresser. Zohan finds work in an Arab-run salon and drums up extra business by mating with the (all-female, all-elderly) clients.

He also learns the very important lesson that not all Arabs are bad—particularly ones with great racks and cracking booties like the salon owner Dalia (Entourage’s Emmanuelle Chriqui).

Trouble brews between the Israeli and Arabic communities when The Phantom comes to town and Zohan fears he’ll have to resort to his old violent ways.

But wouldntchaknow, it’s all just a ploy by a local tycoon (boxing announcer Michael Buffer) who wants the ethnics to firebomb each other’s shops and houses so he can bulldoze the lot and build a new shopping centre.

On paper, not an unpromising idea for a film. In reality, totally ruined by one factor everything.

Smug-puss Sandler’s conviction that he’s doing something of genuine worth is bad enough.

But it’s a minor concern compared to the jokes. Which all fall into one of three categories.

1. Nicked form The Simpsons.

2. Nicked from Borat.

3. Not nicked from anywhere and absolute pony.

I did enjoy a bit where one of the Arabs phones abroad, and has to enter a lengthy 25-odd digit dialling code. But I enjoyed it a lot more in the 1997 Simpsons episode In Marge We Trust, when Homer first did the gag.

And here’s a sample of some of that original material Sandler’s cooked up from category three.

Night watch guy: “Tonight’s our night for the community night watch.“ Sandler: “What? The Communism tight crotch?” Comedy to clear your throat to.

Shame

Even the mighty Chris Rock fails to wring a single laugh out of his cameo.

But he’s far from the worst. (Hang your heads Henry “The Fonz” Winkler, John McEnroe and George “Star Trek” Takei, to name and shame but three.)

Lifting the crown, though, is Mariah Carey. She sets a terrifying new low for cameo roles by struggling to convincingly act as herself.

Most disappointing thing about Zohan’s supreme crapness is the writing credit for Judd Apatow.

A name which in the dim and distant past used to give some indication of quality, but now means about as much on the end credits as the “no harm came to animals” disclaimer.

Still. If there’s one film that might bring peace to the Middle East, and cause Arab and Jew to join together in harmony, this might well be it.

Because hey. At least now they’ve got a common enemy.