You Don’t Mess With the Zohan
1 Lloyd – Not Family-Friendly
MPAA Rating PG-13 – For crude and sexual content throughout, language and nudity.
Adam Sandler plays an Israeli commando in this flick who leaves the army to become a hairstylist in New York City. However, the Zohan has a hard time turning his back on his former life because his former life follows him to the Big Apple.
So, what’s the movie like? Adam Sandler co-wrote it with Knocked Up director Judd Apatow and Saturday Night Live writer Robert Smigel. That, along with the fact that the MPAA warning reads PG-13 for “crude and sexual content throughout, language and nudity” should pretty much tell you what You Don’t Mess With the Zohan is like. There’s nothing new here. It’s rude and crude throughout and should carry an R rating. However, in the MPAA world, since the f-bomb is not dropped, they slap a PG-13 rating on the movie. Knocked Up was a bad sex-innuendo-filled movie and Saturday Night Live hasn’t come up with anything original in a long long time. Why Sandler thought teaming up with Apatow and Smigel was a good idea we may never know.
That being said, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan is a close to 2 hour insult to your intelligence. It’s a stream of sex jokes, and since a writer from Saturday Night Live helped out, it’s nothing more than approximately 2 hours of poorly done 15 minute slap-stick comedy sketches. Another amazing aspect of this movie revolves around the fact that it’s full of racial slurs, stereo-typing and even one scene where they’re playing hacky sack with a cat, and absolutely no one is complaining! Come on folks, PETA was all up in arms saying a monkey was abused in the Warner Bros movie Speed Racer and Mike Myers upcoming Love Guru is taking hits for being racist, but no one says anything about the Zohan movie?
The bottom line is, this movie is in poor taste and poorly done. It’s really too bad. Adam Sandler always has the potential of being a great actor putting out quality movies. But, for some reason, he often falls back to the rude and crude humor which he doesn’t have to work for. The laughs are quick and easy, but there’s no depth and no work involved. If he wants to put out good humor, he really needs to find some new writing partners.
You Don’t Mess With the Zohan almost ended up on the editing room floor for me under what I call my Deleted Scenes section. Movies landing there simply should have been left un-released. But, Sandler’s new flick did manage a 1 Lloyd rating simply because I did laugh at times throughout the 2 hour insult. With an endless stream of on-liners and slap-stick humor, he did manage to tickle my funny bone a couple times.
However, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan is NOT family-friendly. Maybe a better title would be – Don’t ‘Bother’ Messing With the Zohan.
Avoid this show!
Dr. Rus
Dr. Rus has 30+ years experience in the field of communication. He takes this experience, and his passion to encourage others to positively effect their environment, when providing insight and movie reviews. 
