When this movie was released in 2008 I have to admit that I was already burned out on Sandler movies. Therefore I didn't actually watch it until some students of mine were laughing their butts off at the computer during lunch break. They were watching clips from this movie and well, the kids were not wrong, it was funny.

Sandler plays the lead role of Zohan Dvir and is a commando for Israeli special forces or something like that. It doesn't really matter. Basically he is superhuman performing such impossible acts like telepathically controlling his own severed hand to win a battle and then reattaching the hand and swimming faster than a jetski.

Despite his abilities and obvious value to the military he secretly longs to fulfill his dream of moving to New York City to become a hairdresser. Realizing that the military will never let him go he fakes his own death and sneaks into the cargo hold of a plane heading to New York. While below he changes his look and also does some styling work on a few dogs that are down there with him.

Once arriving in New York, Zohan has changed his name to "Scrappy Coco" (see above picture,) and slowly has to come to terms that he is not a superstar in USA and no one wants to hire him. Eventually the tables turn (as you would expect) and there ends up being a localized Palestinian / Israeli conflict in his neighborhood that eventually Zohan and his arch-nemesis "the Phantom" have to sort out using their superpowers.

I realize after spell-checking my work that I probably haven't made the film sound very good because to be honest I don't know how to describe it. I just know this: The film is absurd but in a good way. This is one of my favorite later Sandler movies because it is so over the top and it also kind of pokes fun at stereotypes of Israelis and Palestinians but in a good-natured way such as the fact that they are putting hummus on everything and everyone really really likes Mariah Carey and hacky sack.

Trust me on this: You will laugh if you watch this. Also, this kind of returns to something i as writing about a few articles ago about how Sandler knows how to make money using this very specific formula. This movie was only considered a "moderate success" by making a mere $100 million.

7.5 / 10