Adam Sandler finds adventure as Zohan in You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.

Columbia pictures

Politics has always been a very iffy proposition for American comedies. But Adam Sandler takes a crack at it in You Don’t Mess With the Zohan in which the neverending Arab-Israeli conflict serves as the film’s very touchy background.

Let’s see if his young fans who love Sandler’s goofball child-man persona will go for it … and for Sandler’s thick Israeli accent … and for the fact that although there are some outrageously funny things going on in You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, the writers often overreach for laughs that simply aren’t there. Besides Sandler himself, the script was written with Robert Smigel and Judd Apatow. Apatow gave us Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, so You Don’t Mess With the Zohan is filled with his trademark sex jokes, stretching the limits of its PG-13 rating. If you’ve ever wanted to look at Sandler’s naked rear end, this is your chance.

Sandler plays the legendary, but unfulfilled, Israeli commando Zohan who is forever on the trail of the equally fabled Palestinian terrorist, Phantom (John Turturro). Although Zohan’s father calls his son “Rembrandt with a grenade,” he fantasizes about becoming a hairdresser. So he fakes his own death during one of his battles with Phantom and stows away in the cargo hold of an airplane flying to New York City, his only companions being a pair of dogs named Scrappy and Coco.

When he arrives in Manhattan he tells everyone he’s an Australian and that his name is Scrappy Coco. Of course he quickly finds a job at a hair salon run by — you guessed it! — a pretty Palestinian refugee.

It’s not long before he has become the star attraction there with the older customers. He gives them sexy new hairstyles, then takes them in the back room for some extracurricular sexual activity. Honestly, there’s just so much one can take of Sandler wriggling his hips, licking a customer’s hair lasciviously, then rattling the salon’s walls during one of his erotic encounters until the mousse and shampoo bottles fall off the shelves.

Before long his fame has caught the attention of a Palestinian refugee taxi driver, Salim (Rob Schneider), who is still smarting over the long-ago theft of his beloved goat by Zohan. This was no ordinary goat, we are assured, but one that could fetch soup. (No kidding!) Next, Phantom gets the call to come to New York and becomes part of a plot to finally assassinate his longtime arch enemy. Before the inevitable and unbelievable “can’t we all just get along?” ending, the filmmakers reach a low point in which Zohan and a pair of friends play hacky-sack — tossing a little bean bag from foot to foot — with a house cat.

Dennis Dugan, who directed Sandler’s hits Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, reaches too far for laughs in a script that awkwardly tries to balance comedy with Middle East tensions while marrying sexual escapades with slapstick. A romance between Zohan and the Palestinian hair salon operator (Emmanuelle Chriqui) never comes alive. A string of well-known faces make cameo appearances, including Chris Rock, Henry Winkler, Dave Matthews, Kevin James, Kevin Nealon, John McEnroe and Mariah Carey. Too bad they didn’t have more to do. The film itself is a burlesque.

*You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

Starring: Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Nick Swardson, Lainie Kazan, Rob Schneider.

Rated: PG-13, contains violence, sexual situations, adult themes, nudity, profanity.

mjanuson@projo.com