Day Two: Don’t Mess With ‘Don’t Mess With the Zohan’

My friend and I stood in line at the bustling Saturday night cinema, determined to see Kung-Fu Panda. He was high on Percoset, having had his wisdom teeth out the day before, and we’d just come from an adventurous all-you-can-eat establishment we’d christened ‘The China Buff.’ Suddenly, we were accosted by a high school ‘friend’ wearing a pink feathery hat for no discernable reason.

            “Hey you guys!” he caroled. “What are you seeing?”

            “We haven’t decided yet,” my friend said, tactfully.

            “I’m seeing Kung-Fu Panda!” he yelped. “You guys should see it too!”

            “We’re uh, thinking about it. Good talking to you, Chris.”

            My friend turns to me and under his voice says, hopefully, “Don’t Mess With the Zohan?”

            I concurred.

            So that’s how I found myself in Adam Sandler’s newest visual shindig, gratefully eating my sour gummi worms unmolested. I’ve always had a good relationship with Sandler, and rude press-ganging aside, I was honestly looking forward to seeing him back at the top of his game. Still, I know that a lot of people have a love-hate relationship with the ex-SNL singer. No one I know has uniformly liked every movies he’s made, whether the deal-breaker is Little Nicky, Punch Drunk Love, Spanglish, or combinations of the three.

            To simplify the whole process, I’m just going to say that this isn’t going to go down in the books as one of those depending-on-your-opinion atrocities, but neither is it a triumphant return to the glory days of Billy Madison or Happy Gilmore.

            In this excursion, Sandler tackles the tender Palestinian-Israeli conflict. To his credit, he does this with all the sensitivity of a drunken rhinoceros and all the reverence of Mr. T skydiving into a vat of pudding wearing a tutu. Dressed in a series of Mariah Carey t-shirts and short shorts to display a package hitherto unknown since David Bowie’s spandex-clad member in Labrynth, Zohan fulfils the role of Israelis we all secretly hold. That is, twenty years behind us in culture, dressed like flamboyant Europeans with similar accents and terrifyingly good at killing people.

            The Palestinians, by contrast, also jubilantly fulfill their stereotype as a race of rock-throwing super-terrorists, who, in one memorable scene, scream at the Zohan that there are two sides of every issue while firing an assault rifle.

Meaning, he handles the entire affair exactly right. Not only is the soapbox missing from this movie, but it’s illuminated by the light of its burning effigies.

            And that’s damn refreshing.

            I think my favorite line from the movie was right from the very end when the two sides have reached a kind of peace and the New York Palestinians are bemoaning the state of their presence here and one New York Israeli says, “You know, life here isn’t easy for us either.” “Why is that?” “Because we look like you.”

            So all in all, I appreciate that Sandler takes an easy tack to a tough issue and comes out on top by reminding us that it’s just a comedy. It’s not political commentary, it’s just a silly backdrop to a silly story. So, if you’re into the unabashedly goofy, with no hint of seriousness, you can’t go far wrong with ‘Don’t Mess With The Zohan.’ That is, if you like Adam Sandler movies.

            As for me, I give it three out of five silky smooths.

Horton Hears A Who, the Most Uncool Review Just For You

Lame rhyming aside, Dr. Seuss has been seriously mistreated the past couple of years: ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’ and ‘The Cat In the Hat’ have probably polished the inside of his coffin to glassy perfection with friction. It hurts especially because I so desperately want to like these movies. Deep in my cold, aching heart, a little piece of me still wants to return to the first time I heard they were making ‘The Grinch.’ ‘Jim Carey? Of Pet Detective and Mask fame? Starring as Grinch? My tiny, younger heart wants to explode in exitedness! I hope he and Director Ron Howard don’t clumsily reassemble all of my childhood memories into some kind of horrendous lurching monster of incompetant film making!’

Oh, if only I knew, I wouldn’t have had my heart broken… Then reassembled a third time, stitched together with used dental-floss and nudged out the door towards the terrorized townsfolk, yet again, for The Cat in the Hat.

Still, there’s hope. Because Horton Hears a Who wasn’t half bad. Oh sure, Jim Carey occasionally pushed the limits of goofy, especially because the CGI elephant didn’t have his plasticine features punctuating those obscene voices we know and love. And yes, there were a few more plot threads than there needed to be and even a moral tacked on at the end, but it was the best derivative of Seuss’s work since 1966, when the original ‘Grinch’ came out.

I think part of it is because this is the first animated version since the classic. The medium’s changed, but the tender care put into every gorgeous model of elephant, tree and Who rivals the artistry that went into the hand-drawn frames of the classic. The water glints and glistens like real water. Horton’s elephant skin looks cartoonish from the distance, but up close it has tangibility, detail and realism. And the Who’s town is incredible. The sheer density of complexity and Seussian machinery has a richeness all its own. Finally, it seems that Dreamworks is animating on par with Pixar.

The acting’s top-notch, too, featuring the whole spectrum of emerging comedic actors alongside the greats. Seth Rogan proves that he has some decent chops for written scripts. Will Arnett lends his voice for his first excellent movie since moving off cable, and Amy Poehler voiced Steve Carrel’s who wife so well I didn’t even pick up it was her, so divorced from the silliness of SNL and UCB. Like I said, Jim Carey occasionally took the voicing a little too far, but I’m so happy to see him back in comedy (good comedy, that is. I saw Fun With Dick and Jane) that I don’t even care. Over all, he was a great Horton.

It was pretty funny, too: a healthy mix of slapstick, visual gags and bizarreness that made me laugh unabashedly in a nearly empty theater (a shame). I don’t want to spoil the jokes, so I won’t go into detail, but Katie is hilarious and wonderfully disturbing. And don’t forget the references for the adults: Apocalypse Now, Ahhnohld and a inspired anime sequence.

 So see it with your kids, your girlfriend or your folks. If you ever liked Dr. Seuss, see the movie. If you were ever a child, or if you know one, you’ll probably like it. Go with the riff, go with the raff, I give this movie a four-and-a-half. Out of five… something about jive. I dunno, I wasn’t cut out for this Seuss rhyming thing.