A few bars of M.I.A.’s ‘Jimmy Aaja‘ float across a scene in the Adam Sandler comedy You Don’t Mess With the Zohan. It’s a scene toward the end, when the very funny top half dissolves into an incoherent mess. Jews and Arabs are standing around a burning storefront in homage to Do the Right Thing. The movie uses only the kitschy Eastern European melody.

The most interesting things about Zohan: It’s a welter of terrible accents (Israeli, Palestinian) and over-the-top FOB humor. Reviving a mercifully-buried tradition in Hollywood, Rob Schneider dons brownface to play an Arab cabbie. A Munich parody has Israeli cabbies and hot dog vendors across Manhattan pulling hidden semiautomatic weapons from their kebab grills and other implements of trade.

Sandler’s Israeli super-commando brushes with hummus and has parents from the H’imalayas and H’australia. His slapstick lets him sidestep questions of authenticity. Like Team America, this movie is so over the top, trying to map it to reality is a losing propostion. But it also gets him out of the accent problem.

Zohan’s trailer collates its choicest cuts. The movie is uproarious up front and an indisciplined goulash at the end, tossing in haphazard homages to movies like the Bourne Identity series. As in I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, Sandler punches the bro button hard so he can act gay for laughs. The more chauvinist his Zohan, the more he can wear tight pants and Wham! hair and disco like a Village queen.

For this crasser version of Thing, Sandler hired mostly Jewish actors. The gorgeous Emmanuelle Chriqui, a cross between Monica Bellucci and Sibel Kekilli (Head On), plays Palestinian love interest Rafaela; she is Jewish Moroccan from Canada. Sandler reportedly had a difficult time hiring Arab actors for a film written by three Jews (himself, Judd Apatow and Robert Smigel, creator of Triumph the Comic Insult Dog). Italian-American actor John Turturro plays a Palestinian terrorist. To avoid offending Muslims, Zohan and Rafaela never actually get it on, on-screen. The Israeli film The Band’s Visit was far more daring.

The trailer:

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