You Don’t Mess With the Zohan (Sony Blu-ray)

 

Picture: A-     Sound: B+     Extras: B     Film: C

 

 

Often times I hear people say that Adam Sandler is the type of comedian that you either love or you hate.  For me, he is the type of comedian that I usually love to hate or hate to love.  His best work is probably behind him as he had a successful roll during his Saturday Night Live prime and the run of films starting with Billy Madison.  Since those glory days of the mid-90’s he has churned out rather inconsistent work, most of which is barely watchable.  Now and then he gets the formula right, which has mostly occurred when working with Drew Barrymore as his two better films were The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates.  For some odd reason he tends to do charming films and then follows them with just downright absurd and dumb ones, the most recently example is You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, which has literally no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

 

Sander typically plays the same character in just about all of his films, with the rare exception here and there, this time around it’s almost like he is trying to be Adam Sandler crossed with Borat and the results are not funny or even close to it.  Instead we get a tired comedy that actually gets more silly and outrageous as it ticks along and just can’t seem to find material that really works, although I am sure that kids in Middle School will find it hilarious.  I never thought that Sandler could hit a further bottom than films like I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, The Longest Yard remake, or Little Nicky, but he manages to do so here.

 

For those fortunate enough o miss this bomb or avoid the trailers, the plot is super thin, but I’ll attempt to describe it in a sentence.  Sandler plays an ex-Mossad agent, who fakes his death in order to restart his life as a hairdresser in NYC, but his success begins to reveal his identity and soon his past follows him.  Whew.

 

Sony has released the film with all the confidence in the world with a 50GB Blu-ray presented in a 1.85 X 1 widescreen transfer in 1080p high definition.  Surprisingly the film looks really sharp and solid despite being a rather silly film, but from a technical standpoint the film has great color depth, fidelity, and demonstrates some of the best that Blu-ray has to offer.  The Dolby Digital TrueHD 5.1 mix is equally impressive for a comedy and delivers great dynamics with a solid mix of music, dialogue, and various sound effects.

 

Sony has also issued the film with a load of extras including both the theatrical cut of the film as well as the ‘unrated’ version, which adds just a bit more than the shorter theatrical cut.  Personally a good solid comedy should be able to get it all done in 90-minutes, so this film running close to 2-hours just makes it feel even more exhausting and tired.  There are also deleted scenes that can be accessed separately and audio commentary as well, plus 15 behind the scenes featurettes, which are fairly short despite so many of them.  There is also a special Blu-ray feature that is translating the Zohan Graphics-in-picture track, which is something that only Blu-ray can make possible with the formats capabilities that make the DVD obsolete.

 

Die-hard fans of Sandler will appreciate the effort put forth in this Blu-ray release as it runs circles around the standard definition DVD, but moderate fans will wait for his better work to resurface in HD land.

 

 

-   Nate Goss