Arab Countries Won't Get to Mess with 'Zohan'
Filed under: Comedy, Distribution, Politics
Adam Sandler's most recent not-very-funny comedy, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, has earned about 100 million U.S. dollars since its release in June. It's not going to be pulling in any Egyptian gineih, Lebanese lira, or U.A.E. dirhams, though, because the censors in those countries have banned the film from local cinemas. I'm tempted to say that for the first time ever I'm jealous of Middle Eastern moviegoers, but that would be a shallow joke. Besides, no matter how lousy a movie is, it's nice to at least have the option of watching it. Film censorship is common in Arab countries. What's noteworthy here is that the film in question is about Israeli/Palestinian relations, a subject that's probably of some considerable interest to many people in that region. Sandler's character, a former Israeli spy, moves to New York and gets a job at a hair salon run by a Lebanese-American woman -- but people in Lebanon won't be able to see the film. I guess the movie's final message of looking past our differences and learning to get along with each other was deemed too offensive.
Well, OK, as noted in Variety, anything with a lot of sexual content, political messages, or religion bashing is liable not to make it past the censors in the Arab world, and Zohan has plenty of all three. The film's Middle East distributor, Circuit-Empire, is still showing the film to the other Arab countries' censorship boards, but they don't expect it to fare any better than it did in Egypt, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates. Sorry, Middle East! You'll have to view images of Sandler's comically oversized package by some other means!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-18-2008 @ 10:53AM
Rich Drees said...
It'll be interesting to see what kind of bittorrent traffic the film gets in those countries.
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8-18-2008 @ 12:02PM
Ghonius said...
"I guess the movie's final message of looking past our differences and learning to get along with each other was deemed too offensive. " Well, don't you think it was odd timing that Zohan was released during the Iran nuclear ambition era to garner more mainstream support for anything Israel thinks it needs to do (ie, make up more reasons to bomb other countries and take more parts of Palestinian territory for their settlements.) There is no middle ground in Zohan - Palestinians are terrorists and Israeli's are "awesome". That is far from balanced. It's a FOX news approach to filmmaking. The poverty level in Palestine has reached staggering proportions and whether or not you believe it's Hamas' fault or Israel's fault, to create a super-human comedic character who is an IDF solider, and not show a super-human comedic Palestinian character is irresponsible to say the least. The "other" in Zohan are terrorists, bottomline - no special powers, just bumbling idiots. Zohan is an irreverant hairdressing peacenick, who so happens to be trained to rip heads off. A balanced film is something like "World Cup" from the 80's or even "Gaza", which is about homeless street boys in Gaza during the outbreak of the first intifada; there are much better films than Zohan if you want to talk Israel/Palestinian politics. Arab countries did not ban those films or Spielbergs Munich, by the way. It seems your point is that "Those damn arabs ain't integrating again" or something to the effect of "Those damn arabs censoring things again", when you fail to realize your whole angle is pro-israel and that the film is endemically an Israel agit-prop piece .
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8-18-2008 @ 2:35PM
Dam6 said...
Didn't think it was as bad as this article maintains.
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9-12-2008 @ 10:42PM
IP-0009-2200 said...
Jews was in Jerusalem FIRST. arabs got 40 Countries and Jews got like one. Cmon arabs get over it..throw dowm ur weapons and start Working and build up ur own land and stopp being the newage Nazis... like i am so sick of their whining and crying get of ur asses and do something. at least the Jews in israel have made it ya can do the same. Israel and Palestina is even..their both stupid.
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