Adam Sandler, cinema terrorist?
A colleague asked me recently why I hate all of Adam Sandler’s movie. I answered, honestly, that I go into each one with an open mind. I’ve loved one of them (”Punch-Drunk Love”), liked another (”The Wedding Singer”) and respected a third (”Reign Over Me”).
But after suffering through “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan,” in which he plays an Israeli commando who wants to be a hairdresser, I might have to amend my policy. Like “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry,” it’s yet another rude, stupid and hateful movie masquerading as a plea for tolerance. The way I see it, that makes him no better than a terrorist, smiling as he arrives in the theater and then throwing us a bomb.
Of course, Sandler’s fans don’t care about messages–or critics. And to the movie’s dubious credit, it does generate some bad-taste laughs, thanks to a script that was co-written by the talented Judd Apatow (”Knocked Up”) and Robert Smigel (”SNL”). But the scenes where Zohan sleeps with his old-lady customers are gags in the worst sense of the word. It’s the kind of thing that must have seemed funny when Adam and Judd and Robert were getting baked in the backyard, but on the screen it makes us feel like accessories to a crime.
Maybe this movie is Guyville’s answer to “Sex and the City.” But I’m guessing that half of the target audience will get lost on the way to the theater.
Unless things have changed, I stopped watching Sandler because, to me, it seemed I was watching the same charachter over and over.