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Onion Movie, The
Adam Sandler and John Turturro star in this comedy following an indestructible Israeli Special Services agent who decides to live out his dreams as a top US hairstylist
Impotence. Vomiting. Urinating on a cat. Sex with geriatrics. A piranha fish down the front of the trunks. All of these feature in this Adam Sandler comedy, and any of them would be preferable to actually having to sit through such dim-witted piffle. There's a broad theory that no matter how funny the comedy, 90 minutes is the point at which audiences have had enough. You Don't Mess With The Zohan trundles on for 113 minutes, none of them funny. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the backdrop and Sandler is Zohan; a top Israeli agent able to catch bullets, back flip over bazooka shells and perform no-handed press-ups. These sort of CGI super heroics were unintentionally funny in The Matrix and knowingly daft in Charlie's Angels but here it just makes the leading man look like an insufferable show-off. Asked to take out the similarly para-human Palestinian terrorist The Phantom (Tuturro in what we must hope is a career low), Zohan fakes his own death and heads to New York to pursue his dreams of becoming a successful hair stylist. Reluctantly hired by boutique owner Dalia (Chriqui), the film spends much of its running time showing Sandler getting suggestive with shower gel, which quickly grows as tedious as his secret agent antics. Over an hour in, the film finally remembers to assemble a plot so Zohan lusts after Dalia. Some former Palestinian enemies of Zohan recognise their nemesis and evil property developer Walbridge (Buffer) hires redneck thugs to stir up race war in the neighbourhood. These elements arrive in a hurried clump like someone hastily making a Pot Noodle by running it under the hot tap, but at least this means the film is heading towards a climax, albeit one reliant on cameos from shameless celebrities. None of this is to say that the situation in the Middle East should be off-limits as a subject for humour, but it needs sharper talents than Sandler and director Dennis Duggan to treat it with sufficient irreverence to produce an effective satire. Here the ongoing conflict doesn't seem any more significant as a comedy set up than vintage pop culture was for the Austin Powers movies. This finale flirts with the suggestion that peace in the Middle East is possible so long as both sides face a threat from an evil Hollywood villain, but by this stage all goodwill toward humanity will have evaporated. Verdict Woeful. In a cameo as herself, Mariah Carey manages to be funnier than Sandler. That tells you all you need to know. |
