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You Don't Mess with the Zohan
Columbia Pictures (Sony)


5.2

based on 37 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 102 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, language and nudity

Starring Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Nick Swardson, and Rob Schneider

Zohan is an Israeli commando who fakes his own death in order to pursue his dream: becoming a hairstylist in New York. (Sony Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Action \| Comedy
WRITTEN BY:	Adam Sandler Robert Smigel Judd Apatow
DIRECTED BY:	Dennis Dugan
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: October 7, 2008 Theatrical: June 6, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

As hig concepts go, You Don't Mess With the Zohan" takes the cake.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Director Dennis Dugan knows his way around shin-whacking slapstick, and Sandler is mesmerizing.

Time Richard Schickel

The result is a laff riot. Well, all right, a laff scuffle -- a picture that isn't quite as funny as it might be, but is as funny as it needs to be.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The movie "Munich" should have been. At the very least, it's got to be the first picture to use smelly-feet jokes as a means of parsing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But more than that, it's a mainstream movie that dares to make jokes about the kinds of complex political realities that most of us don't dare bring up at dinner parties.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

On screen it looks crazed, but the comic energy is huge, if indiscriminate, and Mr. Sandler's performance -- think Topol doing Charles Boyer -- can be as delicate as it is gleefully vulgar or grotesque.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Sandler works so hard at this, and so shamelessly, that he battered down my resistance. Like a Jerry Lewis out of control, he will do, and does, anything to get a laugh. No thinking adult should get within a mile of this film. I must not have been thinking. For my sins, I laughed.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Essentially, You Don't Mess With the Zohan isn't all that different in tone and sensibility from Sandler's previous films, but he's really trying in this one, and the effort pays off.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Nothing has brought me more cheap pleasure at a movie this year than the sight of shampoo and conditioner bottles falling off a rocking wall while comedian Alec Mapa, as a fellow stylist, tries to keep a straight face. He does a much better job than I did.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Brazenly self-confident in its refusal to pander to the imagined sensitivity of its audience. In this it differs notably from Albert Brooks's "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," which approached some of the same topics with misplaced thoughtfulness and tact.

The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden

The comedy star's legions of fans will welcome the cheerfully crude proceedings as a return to silliness after several earnest, lower-key character turns. The melange of Middle East diplomacy, action absurdity, sexual healing and, when in doubt, hummus, wavers between muscular and middling. It's a surefire hit.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Sandler's first collaboration with co-writer and current Hollywood comedy godhead Judd Apatow, is a crazed, delightfully bizarre return to form for Sandler.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Less like "The Waterboy" and more like "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry," only funny.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The laughs are hit and miss and the movie is ho-hummus.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

This picture is to comedy what carpet bombing is to aerial warfare: The onslaught is so relentless that occasional direct hits on the funny bone are a statistical guarantee.

Los Angeles Times Mark Olsen

As another run-of-the-mill Sandler movie, it is better than most. At this point it seems a little foolish to want, let alone expect, "more" from the guy. If he can't be bothered to put more effort into his films, why should anybody else?

The New Yorker David Denby

An obscene, ridiculous, and occasionally very funny movie, and if it ever gets to the Middle East it will roil the falafel tables on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide.

Empire Ian Freer

A strange, mostly enjoyable mix of big political questions and crude comedy, Zohan overcomes its skeletal plotting and uneven gag ratio through Sandler?s sheer commitment to nonsense.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Intermittently fresh and amusing in a low-down yet schmaltzy way.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Imagine Warren Beatty in "Shampoo" by way of a Jewish Rambo.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Forget "Monty Python," You Don't Mess With the Zohan is a circus that never really flies.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

If nothing else--and there isn't much else--You Don't Mess With the Zohan pronounces the Middle East fair game for absurdist comedy.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

An Israeli-on-Arab version of "Shampoo," You Don’t Mess With the Zohan is terrible in many ways, and shoddy in every way that has to do with filmmaking. But politically it's sort of interesting.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

A little like watching an episode of the TV show of which Adam Sandler is an alum: "Saturday Night Live." Zohan feels like an extended collection of skits tied together by a flimsy umbrella story.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Spectacularly, unimpeachably, relentlessly preposterous.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The movie is gross but not unfunny as it covers the Zohan's rise through hair culture, aided by his steamy heterosexuality, his lack of inhibition and his stereotypical career aggressiveness, until the old ladies are lined up all the way to the Bronx for a few minutes of bliss in the Zohan's chair.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

By the end of the film, the cliché of everybody getting along is reduced to both sides working together in the ultimate monument to capitalism: a mall. Some message.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

Though a bunch of the jokes are milked too thin, there are some absurdly goofy sight gags--like a hacky sack game enlisting a family pet--and a lineup of fun, silly cameos by guests from Chris Rock to Mariah Carey.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Directed with sledgehammer subtlety by Dennis Dugan ("I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry").

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

His humor works best when it's throw-away, but "Zohan" throws everything up to get a yuck. It's a shock to see how many "yuck!" moments Sandler settles for.

NPR Bob Mondello

What's more annoying than the crassness, really, is the directorial sloppiness that results in a virtually mirthless first half-hour and a slow build to chuckles thereafter.

Variety Brian Lowry

The off-the-wall comedy of Robert Smigel and Judd Apatow leaves a mark on the script, but it would require a talent of Peter Sellers' magnitude to conquer this material, and he's not around.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Sandler proves even a hardened Israeli secret service agent can be an imbecilic juvenile.

Premiere Ryan Stewart

To find a comparison for You Don't Mess With the Zohan in Adam Sandler's filmography, you have to go back to 2000's "Little Nicky," a film with a fantasy slant that allowed for jokes of unencumbered silliness.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

In truth, there's not much point to reviewing Adam Sandler comedies. They're almost always widely panned, and yet still manage to earn well over $100 million domestically. Don’' Mess with the Zohan looks to continue both trends, even if exaggerated Yiddish accents and sex with the elderly only take one so far.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Might actually be the stupidest movie with good intentions that I've ever seen.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Serious intent may be lurking somewhere in there, but it's buried under layers of stupidity - not just stupid jokes, which is what you want from Sandler, but also stupid, shallow thinking.

TV Guide Ken Fox

At a time when the images of Arab-Americans are already largely negative, do we really need more violently temperamental, bomb throwing men in turbans and beards?

The average user rating for this movie is 5.2 (out of 10) based on 102 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Nikko C. gave it an8:
Please Lindsey, stop being an earnest, humourless embarrassment to American woman. The ultimate subversion IS humour, not your boring, pious, I-am-a-martyr, super-sensitive political correctness. The people you worry will be offended will not see this film b/c they have no sense of humour and b/c they like to complain and preach hate - much like yourself. The worst movie you have ever seen!? Um, Bio-dome? Battlefield Earth? No, Zohan. Yeah, whatever. Try a little more humour and a little less embellishment specifically used to try and reinforce your views on events like 9/11 which were joke material - whether you like it or not - three years ago. If they aren't, then the perpetrators have won b/c your spirit is not the kind worth saving. Stop choking up metacritic with your total BS. ta, ta.

Travis S. gave it a7:
I must say I laugh a more then I have in a wile. He sure does bang a lot.

Jacob L. gave it an8:
You Don't Mess with The Zohan is perhaps one of the funniest movies you'll ever see this summer. However, be warned there are a lot of sex jokes, along with some other inappropriate humor. If you are under 18 I suggest you look away from the screen at certain points like I did. Trust me. Despite all the inappropriate humor and some jokes I did not quite get, the real humor comes from the way Zohan talks. All and all You Don't Mess with a Zohan is a great movie and I wouldn't like it any other way.

Dan M gave it an8:
Ok, first off, if you didnt like this movie, go watch Cloverfield, then i guarantee you will give "You Dont Mess With The Zohan" a 7,8, or 9. Enough said.

J E. gave it a10:
Come on--political over the top satire is funny.

Will H. gave it a6:
Eh. Funny in places, stupid in others. A teen movie, certainly.

Jessica S. gave it a0:
Never before have I walked out of a movie. I had to leave the theater after about 30 minutes, it was terrible. The [lack of] acting, the [lack of] plot, the [lack of] humor. I wouldn't watch this if someone payed me too.

You Don't Mess with the Zohan Columbia Pictures (Sony)

You Don't Mess with the Zohan
Columbia Pictures (Sony)