It took three top-rank comedy writers with dozens of hits under their belts -- Adam Sandler, Robert Smigel ("Saturday Night Live") and Judd Apatow ("Knocked Up") -- to create a 113-minute film with one joke.
You don't need to mess with the Zohan -- he's messed up plenty as it is.
Although objectively bad by any measure, the anarchic, childlike glee of Sandler's classic characters in "Billy Madison" and "Happy Gilmore" simply defy criticism. But "Zohan" seems like one of those "Saturday Night Live" sketches that everybody knows isn't working, but nobody wants to be the one to tell the guy in charge.
Sandler is Zohan, an indestructible Israeli counter-terrorist, whose one true desire is to be a hairdresser. So during a battle with Palestinian terrorist nemesis The Phantom (John Turturro), he fakes his own death and goes to New York City.
After striking out with the Paul Mitchell salon, he ends up at a little shop owned by a sexy Palestinian girl, Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui), where he can truly express himself by giving overstyled big hair to the elderly women of New York. For some reason, he has sex with them as a bonus.
After the film is two-thirds over, the real bad guy emerges -- a rich mall developer who plans to play the Israelis and Palestinians against each other, so that he has an excuse to move in kick them out.
"Zohan" is loaded with crude racial and ethnic caricatures that include the inevitably heinous Rob Schneider as a Palestinian cab driver and amateur terrorist, raunchy sight gags, and lots of hummus. It's as though Sandler and company saw "Borat" and laughed at all the wrong parts.
• In wide release Additional Information:
'You Don't Mess with the Zohan'
Rated PG-13 for crude sexual content, language and nudity 
(Out of four)
