If you can make it there...

RON FRIEDMAN

Summer is a great opportunity to take in a movie. While targeting completely different audiences, the two following films are set to be the big hits of the season.

Rarely do we see Hollywood films that deal with the Middle East conflict. Rarer still are there comedies about it. Leave it to Adam Sandler to find the humor in a topic many consider too hot to handle. After a few dramatic roles, Sandler returns to his bread and butter – teen-orientated, over-the top, vulgar and offensive slapstick – in the aggressively advertised summer blockbuster You Don't Mess with the Zohan.

In this film, Sandler plays Zohan Dvir, a hyper-sexualized but highly efficient Israeli counter terrorism agent. Although he is the Israel Defence Forces' go-to guy and a one-man demolition unit, Zohan's secret ambition is to become a hair stylist, much to the chagrin of his parents. Desperate for change, Zohan fakes his death on a mission and travels to New York City to try and live his dream.

The affable commando soon makes friends in the Big Apple; among them, a smooth Israeli electronics salesman (played by Israeli actor Ido Mosseri) and a beautiful Palestinian hair-salon owner who takes Zohan in as an apprentice. Just as things start coming together, Zohan is haunted by his past. An Arab taxi driver recognizes him on the street and decides to take his revenge on the villain who once humiliated him and stole his goat. The taxi driver calls up Zohan's nemesis, the arch-terrorist known as Phantom, so that he can finally eliminate the cause of his suffering.

Sandler's film is an equal opportunity offender. Both Israelis and Arabs provide fodder for his crass humor and the characters are made up of a mixture of shallow stereotypes and exaggerated traits. In the end, the two sides of the N.Y.-based Israeli-Palestinian conflict find harmony through opposing a common enemy – a conceited developer who wants to tear down the neighborhood and build a new mall.

While Sandler makes no pretense of accurately representing the situation in the Middle East, his film at least brings the issues into the mainstream – whether in a good way or not is up to viewers to decide.

The other much-anticipated movie of the summer is Sex and the City: The Movie. Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda return once again to haunt the streets of New York. Older, richer and more messed up, the women are out to prove that the city still belongs to them.

The plot picks up four years after the end of the television series. Charlotte is raising her adopted daughter and living in marital bliss with her Jewish husband. Miranda now lives in the geographically close but stylistically distant Brooklyn, with her husband and young child – her marriage hits the rocks when Steve tells her that he cheated on her. Meanwhile, the lustful Samantha has moved to Los Angles to manage the career of her male model boyfriend and is finding it difficult to adjust her life to the requirements of a man, especially so far away from her beloved New York.

But the real reason for the new film (aside from the product placement) is to see what happens to the show's main character, Carrie Bradshaw. At the end of the TV series, we all thought that she had finally found true love in the form of her longtime focus of affection – Mr. Big. However, a happy ending proves illusive for Carrie, who, once again, is disappointed by love.

Those who followed the series and have been waiting for news of their old friends will undoubtedly enjoy the full-length movie. Judging by the hordes of women who were at the theatre – a full week after the movie came out – there is no shortage of viewers. If you don't know about the movie, chances are you won't relate to the storyline, in which case, maybe you should go and see one of the many other summer films waiting to entertain you for a few hours on a hot summer night.

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