Zohan Film -

You Don’t Mess with the Zohan : Revisiting Adam Sandler’s Strangely Prophetic Comedy

It’s not subtle. It’s not diplomatic. But in a weird way, it’s earnest.

John Turturro, in a hilariously committed performance, plays The Phantom as a tragic, cat-loving warrior who keeps accidentally blowing himself up. The film’s best joke is that he’s actually a better person than Zohan—he just happens to be on the other side. zohan film

If you go in expecting Schindler’s List , you’ve missed the point. If you go in expecting a man to fill a blow-dryer with hummus and launch it at a group of thugs, you’ll have a pretty good time. It’s a guilty pleasure that, like a really great conditioner, leaves your brain feeling slick and shiny—and not a lot smarter.

When it was released in the summer of 2008, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan was met with a collective shrug from critics and a modest box office haul. It was classic late-2000s Adam Sandler: broad accents, juvenile sex jokes, and a high-concept premise that felt like a rejected Saturday Night Live sketch stretched to 113 minutes. You Don’t Mess with the Zohan : Revisiting

Faking his own death during a firefight with his nemesis, the Palestinian terrorist known as "The Phantom" (John Turturro), Zohan escapes to New York City. He reinvents himself as "Scrappy Coco," a hairdresser at a struggling salon run by a beautiful Palestinian woman, Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui). Chaos ensues as he tries to hide his past, seduce older women with his "disco disco" moves, and stop a greedy mall developer from gentrifying the neighborhood.

★★½ (Three stars if you love Sandler; two if you don’t; four if you’re watching it at 1 AM.) John Turturro, in a hilariously committed performance, plays

Looking back over fifteen years later, however, the film is a fascinating time capsule—and arguably one of the most audacious, if uneven, comedies of Sandler’s career.