Zohi Sdom

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.