Strangely enough, this always had been a movie that I really wanted to
see. It looked strangely appealing and hilarious to me and while the
movie does appeal and become occasionally a funny one, it still is a
heavily flawed movie that almost does more stuff wrong than right.
There is nothing wrong with its main concept, which is crazy and fun
and also nothing wrong with its main character, played by Adam Sandler.
I only did wish it all would had been part of a different and better
movie. The movie as it is right now is lacking too much with its story
and its consistency, with just about everything.
It's strange how the humor variates throughout the entire. The one
moment it's just plain crazy, while the other it's being a more gross
out type of humor. It doesn't even feel like there is a right balance
and any consistency between its different comedy approaches. I'm sure
that I would had liked the movie way better, if it was entirely like
its, totally absurd, first 10 minutes.
It also would had been more pleasant if its story didn't keep changing
its priorities every 20 minutes, or so. There often is a completely
different focus, as if the story was a compilation of 3 totally
different scripts, that got thrown together. It should had made its
mind up better about what it wanted to be exactly and not try out- and
do so many different things with its story, as it does now.
Because it keeps jumping so much all over the place and keeps changing
its approach and focus constantly because of this, the different story
lines also don't ever work out well enough. There really were some good
ideas to work with here but again, it should had made some better and
more direct choices. It either should had been a spy comedy about Zohan
versus his archenemies Phantom, played by John Turturro, or about Zohan
trying to make it as a barber and save the barber shop from closing
down, or one in which he stopped the evil developer from building a
mall, or one about the whole Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The movie
now instead is featuring a bit of everything in it but nothing ever
feels developed and handled well enough. Everything falls sort of flat
by the end, since it all feels half developed and wrapped up too easily
and really not satisfying enough at all, overall.
The thing I do like about this movie is that's not afraid to make fun
of Isreali's, something that's still a bit of a sensitive subject in
Hollywood, for the obvious reasons that a lot of the people in power
there are actually Jewish. It's nothing new for a movie to poke fun at
Jewish people and customs but it is uncommon for a comedy to constantly
do so, with its main character and its main plot. It's nothing too
offensive by the way. I'm pretty sure that people of Jewish origin,
with a sense of humor in them, can still really laugh at some of the
situations and comedy elements in this movie.
But really, for every good and fun thing that this movie does, there
also is something truly bad. For instance there are a lot of sex jokes
in this movie, which I normally have no problem with but the jokes in
this movie are just a bit too gross for my taste. Every time that you
think that there would be no way that this movie would be doing a
certain thing, or would go that far, it actually does.
Another thing that became annoying after a while were its many
different cameos. Stuff like this often can take you out of a movie, as
is also the case with this movie. It often pauses, just so it can show
another celebrities face, for about 15 seconds.
I really do wish that Adam Sandler would do another 'Zohan' movie,
since there is so much potential with its character and craziness to do
with it. Besides, it probably is the best comedy role he had ever done.
6/10
Watch trailer
No comments: