Zohan - Messy, But Fun - ***

Somehow, even when you walk to the ticket booth and shell out ten dollars to watch an Adam Sandler movie, and wonder how in the world you got talked into this, you know that there are going to be at least a few moments of lukewarm humor.

That is certainly the case with Zohan, a kind of Barbershop set in a Middle Eastern block in New York, instead of a black neighborhood. In fact, although Zohan is very much an Adam Sandler movie, and features the usual silly humor, it also has some improbable feats, fake accents and an exceedingly powerful crotch, much of which I can't say I have seen in a Sandler film before.

Sandler plays Zohan, a top Israeli soldier, who specializes in capturing a slippery Palestinian terrorist known as the Phantom (John Turturro) by yawning his way through dangerous situations. A veritable superman in a Mariah Carey t-shirt, he catches bullets like bugs between his thumb and forefinger (like a certain South Indian actor I know), swims the butterfly with enough speed and agility to make the most capable dolphin hang up its fins in shame, and doesn't mind too much if a piranha is flopping around in his swimming trunks.

But Zohan is bored with all this, and wants to hang up his holster in favor of a hair dryer. Seeing that his parents and comrades won't understand his ambitions, he fakes his own death and escapes in the luggage compartment of a plane to New York, his fellow passengers, two dogs named Scrappy and Coco, whose names he adopts as his alias. Clutching a 1980s Paul Mitchell style magazine, Zohan tries his luck at finding employment as a hairdresser at the legendary stylist's salon, but is shown the door both there and at other salons. Finally, with the help of a fellow Israeli who recognizes him but vows to keep his secret, Zohan lands a job cleaning up at a Palestinian salon in New York's Little Middle Eastern neighborhood.

After successfully giving a haircut and some sex as a bonus to one of the elderly female customers at the salon, Zohan earns a promotion from the salon's beautiful Palestinian owner (Emmanuelle Chriqui) and becomes a highly popular hairstylist and gigolo to the old women who go there. As business booms, trouble arrives in the form of Wallbridge, a ruthless executive who wants to replace the neighborhood with one of his malls, and a Palestinian cab driver with a personal grudge against Zohan (played with some surprising conviction by Rob Schneider), who brings the Phantom back into the mix.

Sandler is in his element as the droopy, yet sexually charged Zohan, and his deadpan casualness works in his favor in this particular role, especially in the first half hour or so when Zohan's soldier skills are on display. There are a few good one-liners that various characters deliver, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more than sufficiently oversimplified to look as though it's actually a couple of brothers wrestling off and on in the playground; even the sexual humor is treated with a certain laziness that allows the viewer to crack a lopsided smile. And despite some messy accents and rather too much hummus, there is a sense that things are going to be all right in the end which allows you to sit through the film.

In other words, if you have done your Adam Sandler homework, your expectations are adequately low and you're looking to just kill some time, this movie even manages to exceed those expectations a little bit.