You Don't Mess With The Zohan

You never know quite what to expect with an Adam Sandler film, or more accurately which Adam Sandler is going to turn up. There's the serious Sandler of the excellent 'Punch Drunk Love', the solid Sandler of 'Click' and '50 First Dates' or the silly Sandler of 'The Waterboy' and 'Little Nicky'. Unfortunately whichever Sandler does turn up it's likely that Rob Schneider and his unique brand of humourless comedy will be close by. In the form of The Zohan, Sandler is unquestionably in silly mode, a format which has yielded mixed results for him in the past. It's usually a question of whether he toes the line or just goes all out, both can be successful but the middle ground is dangerous territory.

The Zohan is the greatest Israeli counter-terrorism agent the world has ever seen, his arch-nemesis is The Phantom (John Turturro), a Palestinian terrorist. Following a showdown between the two, Zohan fakes his own death and travels to New York to follow his dream of becoming a hair stylist and making the world ''silky smooth''. Renaming himself Scrappy Coco, the only job he can find is in a Palestinian salon on a street divided into Palestinian and Israeli businesses. Trouble surfaces when Zohan is recognised by a cab driver Salim (Schneider) threatening Zohan's new-found success.

Unfortunately with Zohan, Sandler has ventured too far into the aforementioned middle ground, as ridiculous (in a good way) that The Zohan is the constraints of the storyline stunt the comedic potential. Sandler is used to playing this sort of role and unsurprisingly becomes The Zohan with ease but the bland supporting characters leave a lot to be desired. Emmanuelle Chriqui is perfectly fine as the token hottie/love interest, Turturro's diluted version of Zohan is solid and even Schneider isn't as terrible as usual. But they're all just there, underdeveloped and uninteresting characters that only serve to highlight that this is all about The Zohan. There are some genuine laughs garnered from the Israeli but all too often these are the start of a long baron patch, the next laugh arriving with a sense of relief rather than satisfaction.

Where Sandler does earn some kudos is in his sensible handling of a potentially dangerous subject matter. The Israeli conflict is not an obvious source for comedy but the 'war is stupid, why can't we all just get along' message is conveyed well and any jokes made at the expense of the warring parties are thankfully far from offensive. This may be the film's saving grace, there is at least some thought behind the madness and it's commendable that a mainstream comedy should even attempt to tackle such a heavyweight issue. It would have been far easier for Sandler to pump out another vanilla comedy like last year's 'I Pronounce You Chuck and Larry', the next target surely must be to make a comedy with a message...that's actually funny.

Verdict: It's not great but Sandler's made far worse in his time. However, it's unlikely to be rivalled as the Israeli conflict comedy of the year.