Why Do The Spaniards Love ‘Zohan’?

There’s something about Zohan. The overseas box office had been buoyed recently by a flurry of well-received summer releases, the most confounding being Spain’s love affair with Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess With the Zohan. What, exactly, is it about a crimping-iron-wielding Mossad agent that has locals skipping siestas to catch the comedy two, sometimes three times? We sent the data to the Defamer Foreign Box Office Analysis Dept.
They sent back a busy graph that showed a confluence of lines plotting summer hours, male bulge humor, and funny Mediterranean accents. Add to that a diversion-hungry populace still shellshocked from the time Gwyneth Paltrow and her redheaded Hell’s Angels boyfriend literally ate their way through the country, and you have what could be considered the perfect summer movie storm.

• ‘Hellboy 2,’ ‘Knight’ lift Europe [Variety]