You Don't Mess With the Zohan

Many times in my life i have gone to see a new movie with serious expectations (see Indy 4) and come away very disappointed.  In the case of You Don't Mess With the Zohan i came in not expecting much and left with a sense of high gratification that only follows a seven dollar investment well spent.  From the very opening scene of Zohan i was laughing like a crazy hyaena and it pretty much continued that way until the closing credits.  

Ok here's the deal.  From the first time i saw the preview i have to say i was impressed by a premise for a Sandler movie in which he plays an israeli commando turned budding nyc hairdresser, but i thought it would be stupid, crass, and filled with shameless sexual innuendoes.   The cool part is this movie nails its genre.  It is stupid and crass and unabashedly sexual-  and most importantly its hilarious.  Not since billy madison have i had such a mindless and visceral joyride with sandler.  The opening scene establishes Zohan as big man on campus on the lovely beaches of israel (not usually a part of that country thats really hyped)  when he puts on a hackysack clinic that ends with a hilarious butt crack stall.  Soon after we find that Zohan is tired of being the "Jewish Bond" and goes to NYC.  To make a long story short he falls for a Palestinian Salon shop owner while working his way up to hairdresser in her shop and lives happily ever after.  I'm not going to bore you with anymore plot because there isn't any, but what really comes through to me is that this was a really fun time at the movies. 

Now, briefly i'd like to go a through a few things that made this one work well for me.  First off this movie was co-written by Robert Smigel (Tv Funhouse on SNL) and Judd Apatow (40 year-old virgin) along with Sandler.  I think that these guys realized that this isn't going to be Wedding Singer 2.  In other words the jokes are cheap and the main character is a buffoon, the movie is completely outrageous and if you can deal with that you'll end up happy.  Second i liked the characters and casting, especially John Turturro as the Phantom, who has his own chain of Hummus gorging restaurants in Palestinian areas.  i also really enjoyed Nick Swardson (Grandma's boy) as Zohan's bud and Rod Schneider as a man torn apart by his memories of Zohan stealing his goat.  Lastly, i liked this movie because it took a very serious subject and shed a little light on how stupid it is.  Now i took a class on the Arab-Israeli dispute in college and let me tell you, you could learn about this stuff for years and not figure out why they are really fighting.  Sure it's about land, religion, whatever, but as we see in the movie once these people move to America they forget about fighting over Israel (yay capitalism).  Some middle east expert will probably rip me apart for this, but seriously there are stubborn and unrealistic people on both sides.  If there's one thing to be taken away from Zohan its that life is short, laugh a little, laugh a lot, and forget about hate because its quite useless.  I award You Don't Mess With the Zohan 5 out of 5 whoopie cushions because its one of Sandler's better movies and definitely his best since Mr. Deeds.  

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I remember first reading about Indiana Jones 4 on a rumor mill website back in 1999 in my college dorm room. Harrison Ford was pushing sixty back then at the ripe old age of 57 but to paraphrase the star trio’s (Ford , Spielberg, and Lucas) stock quote in the time between then and now, “If we can get a great script we’ll do it.”  What they really meant was,”if we think it’s profitable we’ll do it.”  This is the beginning of a story where one the of the most beloved franchises in movie history sells out / crumbles under the weight of impending profitability, Internet fan pressure, and general anticipation.   The result is a movie that could have been straight to DVD if it didn’t have all the star power it clearly possessed.

            Now I’d like to give a brief plot summary.  Scary Cate Blanchett captures Indy and she forces him to help find some secret alien stuff at Roswell.  Indy escapes after helping her and avoids death by nuclear bomb in the dollhouse city when he dives into an old lead lined fridge and travels projectile style oh, say a mile and lands unharmed.  After its found out that Indy helped the Commies, he gets his job taken away, but luckily his secret son Mutt shows up to tell him that one of his school pals is in lost in South America and clues Indy into the existence of a Crystal Skull.  So of course everybody hops in the plane that leaves red dots behind it and the chase for the skull, and gold city it will unlock, is on.  Along the way, they pick up Marion (Raiders of the Lost Ark) who spills the beans about Mutt being Indys’s Son and Indy;s pathetic new sidekick (Ray Winstone) switches allegiances several times.  When they finally get to what is supposed to be the city made of solid gold they end up finding a big circle of alien statues and one is missing the head.  So Cate Blanchett puts the head back on, she gets killed, the Aliens start spinning around, then a spaceship breaks through the floor, and the whole sacred temple crumbles as everyone barely escapes.  Then at the end Indy’s like, “Who needs a city of gold, when the aliens told us that knowledge is the true gold.”   In the Epilogue, Indy marries Marion and Mutt tries to put on the sacred Indy hat only to have it taken away by Indy.  That’s just tough for Shia Lebouf, but he’ll probably have a sweet hat too in Mutt Jones 1:  Conquest of the Martian Mines. 

In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull I was disappointed on many levels, but lets start out with Prairie Dogs.  In Raiders, the movie opens with the paramount logo, which fades away into a shot of a mountain, which has approximately the same silhouette as the logo mountain. This was a very clever opening by Steven Spielberg.  Crystal Skull opens with an homage to this original shot where what appears to be a mountain turns out to be a Prairie dog mound when a wack-a-mole head pops out the mountains top.  Here is an omen of things to come my friends.  Now I don’t know whether the point of this movie is to set up Indiana Jones the animated series or Mutt Jones 1, but for my money this one was seemed like it was written for kids.  The movie was downright goofy, and in most cases didn’t walk on the edge of realism like the previous films did.  I think that this difference was due to the use, or misuse of computer aided special effects.  As I learned from my original trilogy DVD set, the first three indy adventures didn’t employ any computer effects.  The idea was that the films were shot in the old cut and run style of the old time serial TV shows that Lucas and Spielberg loved so well.  So why did they get away from this and go with goofy slapsticky and unrealistic effects? Like Indy in a projectile refrigerator, Indy and company surviving three deadly waterfall drops, and even, Indy crushing a military vehicles windshield and frame with his 60 year old fanny and exclaiming, “Damn, I thought that was closer.”  This kind of humor is great for a 12 year old, but I remembered the original movies being smart, sophisticated, they were movies that pushed the envelope.  This was a movie where I wasn’t really challenged; there was no great mystery, no interesting mythology, no serious evil threat (although Cate Blanchett managed to look pretty scary/weird). I really have to believe that the only reason this movie was made was to get kids to buy Lego Indiana Jones for Wii.  

Another big problem with Indy 4 was the lack of an interesting Mythology and also the lack of the promised gold city.  All of the other films had great stories that went along with the quests for the precious artifacts.  Because they chose to make this one about aliens its kind of hard to place it in the archaeology landscape.  It’s just a bad fit.  Also, I was greatly disappointed by the lack of the big payoff of a gold city.  In Raiders, you had the snake pit room, then there was the temple of doom, and in the Last Crusade there was the temple of the grail.  Where is the great set piece of Crystal Skull?  The artifact room that we see for 2 minutes or the round-table o aliens, both of which are destroyed at the end( so much for the knowledge)?

Now, while I could go on and ascend further up the hit lists of those crazy George Lucas faithful, I’m going to hit on a few positives and then wrap this sucker up.  First of all, it had Harrison Ford in it, that alone was enjoyable:  to see him giving it a final go.  The guy’s pretty impressive for a sixty year old. And I have to say I did like Shia in this as well, although I think it would be a big mistake to let him carry the series on further.    But here lies the problem that I grazed in the beginning of this review, there will be enough interest from internet rumor mill sites and Lucas-drone message boards, saying “I’d like to see that Shia in Mutt Jones 1.”  And the sales of all the merchandising from this movie, the video games, and action figures, etc will make Lucas scratch his beard and say. “There’s a lot of interest in this thing.  I’ll met Mutt Jones 1 could do like 200 million domestically in the first weekend.”  Last of all, I thought the action, while not the same premium brand as the previous films, was generally entertaining by today’s standards. 

So in conclusion, I think that if you if were a die-hard fan of the original movies you should leave this one alone.  I came away from it pretty disappointed and annoyed that it didn’t hold a candle to the first three.  However, if you can barely remember what the first ones were like and have kids ages 8-14 this is probably a good bet.  I award Indy and the Crystal Skull 2 out of 5 stars as a serious film and 4 out of 5 cupcakes as a kid’s movie.