You Don't Mess with the Zohan

Name: You Don't Mess with the Zohan
Director: Dennis Dugan
Genre: Action
Released: 2008-01-01
Duration: 1h 53m
Rating: 5.7
Cast: Adam Sandler, Emmanuelle Chriqui, John Turturro, Nick Swardson, Lainie Kazan

PG-13 2008 Action · Nearly two hours feels excessive for this level of juvenile comedy.

Mixed reception comedy

5.6/10

IMDb

37%

Rotten

54/100

Metacritic

★

2.54/5

Letterboxd

🎬

5.7/10

TMDB

Rewatch

one and done

Attention

half watch ok

Phone-check

medium

Ages

feels dated

The brief

Adam Sandler commits fully to playing an Israeli super-soldier turned aspiring hairstylist, and his unhinged energy carries this absurd comedy through its bloated 113-minute runtime. The humor is aggressively juvenile and politically incorrect in that mid-2000s Sandler way, mixing slapstick action sequences with cringe-worthy cultural stereotypes and surprisingly elaborate hair salon choreography. It's simultaneously too long and too committed to its own weirdness to dismiss entirely. For fans of Happy Gilmore-era Sandler who can stomach outdated comedy and don't mind turning their brain completely off.

juvenile slapstick cultural stereotypes mid-2000s cringe absurd commitment action-comedy mashup hairstylist fantasy

The verdict

If you have a high tolerance for Adam Sandler's most unhinged comedic impulses and don't mind aggressively juvenile humor mixed with outdated cultural stereotypes, this committed absurdist comedy delivers exactly the brain-off entertainment you're seeking. If you prefer smarter comedy or are sensitive to politically incorrect humor from the mid-2000s, the bloated runtime and cringe-worthy gags will feel like an endurance test.