Messing with the Zohan.

A few days ago I found the time (and the necessary guts) to watch one USA/Israel movie I've read so much about on Usenet.

I'm talking about last year 'Don't mess with the Zohan' with Adam Sandler, of course.

I've seen a few Sandler movies in the past, I have to admit it. With the exception of P.T. Anderson's Punch Drunk Love they were all uniformally, abysmally and incredibly silly. Thi doesn't mean that I didn't laugh, but Sandler is certainly no Woody Allen. The Wedding Singer at least was partly about my (musically) favourite decade.

Zohan is no exception: it's an abysmally silly movie. The clinch this time is the "subtle" political

subtext in a movie about an - how shoudl I define him - "Israeli counter terrorist agent with quasi superhero powers turned hairdresser" made by a USA/Israel company, and with a staunch pro-Israeli Jewish-American actor as the main star.

The movie was shot and released well before the bloody Gaza 'Cast Lead' military operation occurred some months ago. I've watched the movie after these recent facts: when Zohan enters the 'Lebanon border zone' to look for the Phantom a peasant home is blown to pieces (by the Palestinians, who else). It is comforting to see that despite all you might have heard about peasant homes blown to pieces (by the IDF or the Palestinians) the Israeli gov't actually issues these cards.

And when poor Palestinian children throw stones...

 they are not stopped with sometimes deadly force. Israeli counter terrorist agents prefer to win the "hearts and minds"  using the very stones thrown at them. Like this:

It's comforting to actually hear the truth about the situation in the occupied territories from the horse mouth. Sure, when Zohan finally lands in America and "auditions" in a hair salon for children you get such a scene:

where Zohan reprimends a six year old for being too wimpy: at his age Zohan 'already had killed seven people'. But that must surely have been an error in continuity.

Yes, yes, of course this only a silly Adam Sandler movie, and you can't take too seriously a Israeli counter terrorist agent in a Mariah Carey T-Shirt (M.C. herself appears in a cameo). There will be peace and friendship with the former terrorist, and his Hitzbollah Hotline; Zohan will even marry the beautiful Palestinian hairdresser (with the benediction of his Israely parents no less - good luck he's in the USA, I wouldn't be too sure he would have been able to do the same in Israel).

Oh, George Takei of Star Trek  fame appears in another 'liberal' cameo:

The big blooper of this movie? Choosing 'Keep feeling fascination' by The Human League as a soundtrack song. The Human League, the same synthpop group who wrote 'The Lebanon'....