CHICAGO - MOVIE REVIEWS: YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN

Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times calls the new Adam Sandler comedy You Don't Mess With the Zohan "shameless in its eagerness to extract laughs from every possible breach of taste or decorum." Nevertheless, Ebert suggests, Sandler succeeds in doing just that. "This is a mighty hymn of and to vulgarity, and either you enjoy it, or you don't. I found myself enjoying it a surprising amount of the time, even though I was thoroughly ashamed of myself." A.O. Scott in the New York Times also agrees that "a lot of the crude bodily-function jokes are actually pretty funny." Rafer Guzmán's take on the film in Newsday: "Crude, idiotic, ridiculous - in other words, flat-out hilarious, and Sandler's funniest film in years." But Mark Olsen in the Los Angeles Times suggests that such an assessment is far too generous. "If this was to be unapologetically funny, likable in an un-ironic, non-guilty-pleasure way," he writes, "You Don't Mess With the Zohan falls short. As a cutting comedic satire about the Arab-Israeli conflict and stereotypes, it misses more than it hits. As another run-of-the-mill Sandler movie, it is better than most." And Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer assesses it this way: "An amiable mess."



06/06/2008