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53
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49
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35
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71
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56
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70
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56
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93
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27
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47
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56
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93
WALL-E
82
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73
Kung Fu Panda
72
Ghost Town
71
Tropic Thunder
70
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
67
Bolt
65
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
64
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
63
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The
63
Burn After Reading
61
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
60
Traitor
59
Role Models
58
Express, The
58
Quantum of Solace
58
City of Ember
57
Secret Life of Bees, The
57
Body of Lies
57
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
57
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
57
Flash of Genius
56
Twilight
56
W.
56
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
55
House Bunny, The
54
Get Smart
53
Quarantine
53
Rocker, The
53
Lucky Ones, The
52
Longshots, The
51
Mamma Mia!
49
Sex Drive
49
Family That Preys, The
49
Soul Men
47
Swing Vote
47
X-Files: I Want to Believe, The
46
Lakeview Terrace
45
Blindness
45
Pride and Glory
43
Eagle Eye
43
Meet Dave
43
Death Race
41
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
39
Nights in Rodanthe
37
Miracle at St. Anna
36
Space Chimps
36
Righteous Kill
36
Fly Me to the Moon
35
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
35
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
35
Mirrors
34
My Best Friend's Girl
31
Max Payne
28
Haunting of Molly Hartley. The
27
Women, The
26
Babylon A.D.
24
Bangkok Dangerous
20
American Carol, An
19
Saw V
15
Disaster Movie
15
College
xx
Australia
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xx
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64
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69
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62
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84
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54
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xx
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75
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xx
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66
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56
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55
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50
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61
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43
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62
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49
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46
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84
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41
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81
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xx
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62
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46
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63
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xx
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46
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69
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73
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84
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25
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81
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51
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59
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73
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40
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55
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53
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79
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67
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82
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64
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57
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72
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83
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43
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83
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61
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84
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52
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79
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61
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59
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55
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66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
89
Man on Wire
85
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Up the Yangtze
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Ballast
84
Momma's Man
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Frozen River
82
Rachel Getting Married
81
Let the Right One In
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
80
Encounters at the End of the World
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
79
Moving Midway
79
Visitor, The
78
I've Loved You So Long
78
Last Mistress, The
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
75
Pool, The
75
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
74
Secret, A
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
73
Obscene
73
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
72
Transsiberian
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
69
Frontrunners
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
68
August Evening
67
Synecdoche, New York
67
Flow: For Love of Water
66
Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
66
Elegy
66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
64
Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
64
Fall, The
64
Appaloosa
64
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
63
JCVD
63
Eden
63
Man Named Pearl, A
63
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
62
Changeling
62
Kabluey
62
Duchess, The
62
Mister Foe
62
Baghead
61
Wackness, The
61
Brick Lane
61
Universe of Keith Haring
59
Nights and Weekends
59
We Are Wizards
58
Splinter
57
Towelhead
57
Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
57
Sixty Six
56
Special
56
Save Me
56
Religulous
56
Bottle Shock
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
55
Ping Pong Playa
54
Humboldt County
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
53
Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
52
First Basket, The
52
Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
51
Morning Light
50
Breakfast with Scot
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
47
How About You
47
Choke
46
Choose Connor
46
Elephant King, The
46
Dukes, The
45
Shoot on Sight
44
Henry Poole is Here
43
Call and Response
43
Tru Loved
43
Gardens of the Night
41
Johnny Got His Gun
41
Cthulhu
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
40
Passengers
37
Forever Strong
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
33
My Name Is Bruce
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Hounddog
30
Guitar, The
28
Fireproof
27
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
Everybody Wants to Be Italian
26
Filth and Wisdom
25
Lake City
xx
Dostana
xx
Phoebe in Wonderland
xx
All of Us
xx
Matador, The
xx
Billy: The Early Years
xx
Roadside Romeo
xx
B.O.H.I.C.A.
xx
Eden Lake
xx
Just Buried
xx
Beer for My Horses
xx
Mary
xx
Lower Learning
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
You Don't Mess with the Zohan
Columbia Pictures (Sony)
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, language and nudity
Starring
Adam Sandler,
John Turturro,
Emmanuelle Chriqui,
Nick Swardson,
and
Rob Schneider
Zohan is an Israeli commando who fakes his own death in order to pursue his dream: becoming a hairstylist in New York. (Sony Pictures)
| GENRE(S): |
Action
|
Comedy
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Adam Sandler
Robert Smigel
Judd Apatow
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Dennis Dugan
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: October 7, 2008
Theatrical: June 6, 2008
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
83
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
As hig concepts go, You Don't Mess With the Zohan" takes the cake.

80
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
Director Dennis Dugan knows his way around shin-whacking slapstick, and Sandler is mesmerizing.

80
Time
Richard Schickel
The result is a laff riot. Well, all right, a laff scuffle -- a picture that isn't quite as funny as it might be, but is as funny as it needs to be.

80
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
The movie "Munich" should have been. At the very least, it's got to be the first picture to use smelly-feet jokes as a means of parsing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But more than that, it's a mainstream movie that dares to make jokes about the kinds of complex political realities that most of us don't dare bring up at dinner parties.

80
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
On screen it looks crazed, but the comic energy is huge, if indiscriminate, and Mr. Sandler's performance -- think Topol doing Charles Boyer -- can be as delicate as it is gleefully vulgar or grotesque.

75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Sandler works so hard at this, and so shamelessly, that he battered down my resistance. Like a Jerry Lewis out of control, he will do, and does, anything to get a laugh. No thinking adult should get within a mile of this film. I must not have been thinking. For my sins, I laughed.

75
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Essentially, You Don't Mess With the Zohan isn't all that different in tone and sensibility from Sandler's previous films, but he's really trying in this one, and the effort pays off.

75
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
Nothing has brought me more cheap pleasure at a movie this year than the sight of shampoo and conditioner bottles falling off a rocking wall while comedian Alec Mapa, as a fellow stylist, tries to keep a straight face. He does a much better job than I did.

70
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
Brazenly self-confident in its refusal to pander to the imagined sensitivity of its audience. In this it differs notably from Albert Brooks's "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," which approached some of the same topics with misplaced thoughtfulness and tact.

70
The Hollywood Reporter
Sheri Linden
The comedy star's legions of fans will welcome the cheerfully crude proceedings as a return to silliness after several earnest, lower-key character turns. The melange of Middle East diplomacy, action absurdity, sexual healing and, when in doubt, hummus, wavers between muscular and middling. It's a surefire hit.

67
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Sandler's first collaboration with co-writer and current Hollywood comedy godhead Judd Apatow, is a crazed, delightfully bizarre return to form for Sandler.

63
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Less like "The Waterboy" and more like "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry," only funny.

63
USA Today
Claudia Puig
The laughs are hit and miss and the movie is ho-hummus.

63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
This picture is to comedy what carpet bombing is to aerial warfare: The onslaught is so relentless that occasional direct hits on the funny bone are a statistical guarantee.

60
Los Angeles Times
Mark Olsen
As another run-of-the-mill Sandler movie, it is better than most. At this point it seems a little foolish to want, let alone expect, "more" from the guy. If he can't be bothered to put more effort into his films, why should anybody else?

60
The New Yorker
David Denby
An obscene, ridiculous, and occasionally very funny movie, and if it ever gets to the Middle East it will roil the falafel tables on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide.

60
Empire
Ian Freer
A strange, mostly enjoyable mix of big political questions and crude comedy, Zohan overcomes its skeletal plotting and uneven gag ratio through Sandler?s sheer commitment to nonsense.

58
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Intermittently fresh and amusing in a low-down yet schmaltzy way.

58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
Imagine Warren Beatty in "Shampoo" by way of a Jewish Rambo.

58
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Forget "Monty Python," You Don't Mess With the Zohan is a circus that never really flies.

50
Village Voice
Ella Taylor
If nothing else--and there isn't much else--You Don't Mess With the Zohan pronounces the Middle East fair game for absurdist comedy.

50
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
An Israeli-on-Arab version of "Shampoo," You Don’t Mess With the Zohan is terrible in many ways, and shoddy in every way that has to do with filmmaking. But politically it's sort of interesting.

50
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
A little like watching an episode of the TV show of which Adam Sandler is an alum: "Saturday Night Live." Zohan feels like an extended collection of skits tied together by a flimsy umbrella story.

50
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Nathan Rabin
Spectacularly, unimpeachably, relentlessly preposterous.

50
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
The movie is gross but not unfunny as it covers the Zohan's rise through hair culture, aided by his steamy heterosexuality, his lack of inhibition and his stereotypical career aggressiveness, until the old ladies are lined up all the way to the Bronx for a few minutes of bliss in the Zohan's chair.

50
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
By the end of the film, the cliché of everybody getting along is reduced to both sides working together in the ultimate monument to capitalism: a mall. Some message.

50
Chicago Reader
Andrea Gronvall
Though a bunch of the jokes are milked too thin, there are some absurdly goofy sight gags--like a hacky sack game enlisting a family pet--and a lineup of fun, silly cameos by guests from Chris Rock to Mariah Carey.

50
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
Directed with sledgehammer subtlety by Dennis Dugan ("I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry").

40
New York Daily News
Joe Neumaier
His humor works best when it's throw-away, but "Zohan" throws everything up to get a yuck. It's a shock to see how many "yuck!" moments Sandler settles for.

40
NPR
Bob Mondello
What's more annoying than the crassness, really, is the directorial sloppiness that results in a virtually mirthless first half-hour and a slow build to chuckles thereafter.

40
Variety
Brian Lowry
The off-the-wall comedy of Robert Smigel and Judd Apatow leaves a mark on the script, but it would require a talent of Peter Sellers' magnitude to conquer this material, and he's not around.

38
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Sandler proves even a hardened Israeli secret service agent can be an imbecilic juvenile.

38
Premiere
Ryan Stewart
To find a comparison for You Don't Mess With the Zohan in Adam Sandler's filmography, you have to go back to 2000's "Little Nicky," a film with a fantasy slant that allowed for jokes of unencumbered silliness.

30
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
In truth, there's not much point to reviewing Adam Sandler comedies. They're almost always widely panned, and yet still manage to earn well over $100 million domestically. Don’' Mess with the Zohan looks to continue both trends, even if exaggerated Yiddish accents and sex with the elderly only take one so far.

25
Portland Oregonian
M. E. Russell
Might actually be the stupidest movie with good intentions that I've ever seen.

25
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Serious intent may be lurking somewhere in there, but it's buried under layers of stupidity - not just stupid jokes, which is what you want from Sandler, but also stupid, shallow thinking.

25
TV Guide
Ken Fox
At a time when the images of Arab-Americans are already largely negative, do we really need more violently temperamental, bomb throwing men in turbans and beards?


The average user rating for this movie is 5.2 (out of 10) based on 102 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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