To Harry: Maybe it was funnier for me, stuck here in the Chicago diaspora without knowing anything about the TV version. I truly enjoyed all the silly stuff for its own sake, & for the rest of the day, every time I snuggled up to hubby & sang the sugar-sweet "Ha Echad," we both cracked up.Dov Navon and Tal Friedman (who were so funny together in "The Schwartz Dynasty") have wonderful chemistry again as "Mr and Mrs Lot;" sad-sack Navon providing the perfect counter-weight as Friedman flies ever-higher over the top. You're probably right in suggesting that I missed some of the "local jokes," but I think anyone with a Jewish funny-bone will know more than enough.

You know The Simpsons, so they made a movie. Was the movie better than the series? No way. This is the case here, but add lack of funds as a "bonus" and you receive a yawning experience. The movie cannot carry itself. It is just an expansion of a gag, usually no longer than 5 minutes. The movie was done for the summer, that is no shame, but it could have been written better. The main characters lack development, and the plot goes nowhere. But worst of all is the absolute lack of visual effects, so needed in a movie revolving around the destruction of Sodom. I say if you don't have the money to make the necessary visual effects, don't do the movie. Set it up in a place where there is no need for expensive effects. The foreign audience won't be able to watch this movie, because it is absolutely out of context for those unfamiliar with the TV series, which this movie is based on.The Israeli audience, such as myself, was allured to the theaters by the aggressive promotion and a high anticipation. Disappointment was the outcome, unfortunately.

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.