This Is Sodom (2010)

The Worst Film Ever

Am I Missing Something?

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

It seems I enjoyed this film more than did the other reviewers. I laughed out loud several time, something I don't do often at American films. Someone said there was no satire--but there was one really biting moment of political satire, when the angels brush off Hagar and Ishmael as Arabs who therefore do not deserve their attention. There are some clever in-jokes, though I may have missed much of the Israeli humor. Feminists have often commented on the fact that many Biblical women have no names. In the film, Lot refers to his wife as "Lot's wife." Abraham refuses to share a bowl of shellfish with God, who then gets even by banning it. I also liked the reference to the story of Solomon and the two mothers. Many people have cynically pointed out that the mother who tell Solomon not to kill the child could have fooled Solomon by reverse psychology. Here. Lot knows the story and gives the "right" answer, but it backfires. In short, what I liked best is that the film pokes fun at the Biblical story but is directed at an audience well versed in Bible. I've often said that the Bible is too great a book to be monopolized by the pious. I thought the funniest scenes were those involving God and Abraham. Behind the humor we can sense the real questions theologians have raised about God's call to Abraham.

'Zohi Sdom' is a feature film spin-off of 'Eretz Nehederet', Israel's most successful sketch comedy show for nearly a decade now; like in a National Lampoon movie, the cast of the TV show play various roles in a kinda-linear storyline.There was a strange attempt to market 'Zohi Sdom' as a local version of Monty Python's Life of Brian. But other than the fact that it's set in biblical times, there's absolutely no similarity (other than the lead character's outfit). There's no real satire in 'Zohi Sdom'; a shame, because with a feature film the writers had the chance to make satire more biting and more universal than what they could afford to do on network television. Instead, they used that opportunity to have more sex jokes. The humor in 'Zohi Sdom' is a neverending series of gags, none of which have any bearing on the story, and most of which are anachronism gags in the level of The Flintstones (only with a lot more sex).The movie does have a few chuckles, but the humor is so local as to never have any real impact anywhere but Israel in the early 21st century, which is a waste. It does actually have a pretty decent production, and some good actors - Assi Cohen's performance is deliciously hammy (he clearly realized how dumb the script was), and local legendary satirist/journalist Mordechai Kirschenbaum as Abraham is one of the movie's few saving graces. But ultimately it's a failed attempt, which owes all its success to marketing, and will - I believe and hope - disappear into anonymity.

Even in Israel, the entertainment industry is not known for piousness; so give them a Bible story as a basis for satire and you might fear you'll get back pointless and ignorant mocking. But most of the time, the humor in ZOHI SDOME shuns nihilism and springs from a long-standing Jewish view of the Bible in which none of the heroes is considered perfect and any manifestation of God is considered a specialized metaphor. Here Abraham, famous for bargaining with God over the fate of the city of Sodom, finds in God a bargainer straight from the desk of a mobile phone company or insurance agency. Lot, the righteous man in Sodom, is another in a long line of sad sacks that Dov Navon has played in his career, but the movie takes his character seriously and finds an anchor in it among the fast-flung jokes. The movie's cast comes largely from a popular Israeli TV series of skits and jokes, and the advance publicity tried nervously to attract a crowd while cautioning that this is no wide-screen version of the TV show but something else entirely. It is, and whereas the TV show strives to keep up with the nightly or at least the weekly news, ZOHI SDOME is written to be almost as funny years from now. And it probably will be, almost.

'Zohi Sdom' which is translation means 'That's Sodom' deliberately places itself at the intersection between the very popular Israeli TV show 'Eretz Neederet' (Wonderful Country) and the big screen British Monty Python movies of historical and Biblical inspiration. The Israeli weekly shows are a local version of 'Saturday Night Live' bringing at their best some of the sharpest political, social and typological satire in a country that provides endless sources of humor and badly needs laughs to cope with a myriad of problems and conflicts that seem to be unsolvable other than in a comical fantasy. A permanent team of actors usually play all the roles in the show, in a collection of sketchers interleaved with permanent features, which were abandoned here, as was the newsreel format in the favor of the Biblical story parody. The British show was starting with the end of the 60s the source of inspiration of all other comical and satirical TV series all over the world (including the American SNL) and also pioneered the transcription to the wide screen with anthology successes that seldom have been equaled by other similar shows world-wide.The too close following of the sources of inspiration may be the cause for which the big screen movie does not really work. Although the idea is quite cool (the TV anchor in the original show is a cynical God attracting patriarch Abraham into the trap of the Holy Contract while preparing the destruction of the sin city of Sodom) and the story works better that you would expect, there are many laughs during the screening, but none is hysterical. The TV stars do in the movie of the same that they do in the TV show, just the screen is bigger, and some of them do not look as well on the big screen as in the TV box (the otherwise beautiful and talented Alma Zack for example, or Orna Banai who gets a very insignificant role and little screen time). Best are the street scenes depicting the life in Sodom, and here the references to reality nowadays work well. However, the exaggerated respect for the Monty Python formula (including the insertion of music and dances) lead to a (maybe unintended) air of detachment and diminish the acuity of the social and political comment which make the original show be interesting for the majority of its viewers.Released at the pick of the summer season 'Zohi Sdom' will certainly be a huge hit in Israel this year. I am less convinced that it will survive as an outstanding movie beyond this summer.