Between this and I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry I can only assume that Adam Sandler has enter the social activism phase of his career. And after making a final, potent statement about discrimination against people who identify as gay and lesbian in last year’s Chuck & Larry, I guess the former SNL funny man decided to tackle that Mid-East peace thing. Typically, Zohan is crass, rude and yes, occasionally funny, but a tool for healing though it is not. Clearly, over the last few years Sandler has been trying to grow-up with his comedy, but occasionally on this journey he forgets that growing up means actually having to leave childish things behind.

Well, that felt like a serious reading of something as loutish as an Adam Sandler movie, especially one where he plays a Moussad agent that makes James Bond look like Billy Madison. Zohan hates “all the fighting” especially when he must face his Palestinian nemesis “The Phantom” (John Turturro) again after he was set free in a prisoner exchange. (Logical fallacy: Wouldn’t a Palestinian terrorist have a more… Arab-sounding nickname than “The Phantom?”) Zohan fakes his death in a final battle with *sigh* “The Phantom” and heads to New York City to start a new life as hair stylist extraordinaire Scrappy Coco. (Say it with me: “Oy!”)

In a way, one can’t help but admire Sandler’s chutzpah to present a cutthroat Israeli militiaman who secretly harbours the desire to be a stylist, examining a Paul Mitchell catalogue at night while brazenly wearing Mariah Carey t-shirts while on duty. Remember Seth Rogen’s line in Knocked Up? “If any of us get laid tonight, it's because of Eric Bana in Munich.” Well, I guess Jewish guys everywhere can kiss that goodbye; now all we’ll see under every Israeli counterterrorist is a barber yearning to be free. Just as we now know that beneath every anonymous terrorist is a possible shoe salesman with no simpler desire than to find an outlet for their foot fetish.

One can also appreciate Sandler’s desire to throw his old SNL cronies a bone or two, even if its Rob Schneider. Schneider plays Salim, a NYC cab driver that stumbles upon Zohan’s dual life and decides to get revenge over an incident where Zohan took his goat back in the Holy Land. If on the vision alone you have a hard time buying Schneider as a Muslim, relax, you’re not alone. Even Turturro, a credible actor, doesn’t do stereotypical Arab terrorist very well. If Zohan was as high-minded as it thinks it is, why not give these parts to Arab comedians? Little Mosque isn’t a fluke, you know.

In the end though, it seems as if Sandler has refined the approach he started to develop in Chuck & Larry: a high-minded social commentary that is not so much concerned with delving into issues as filming scene upon scene of Zohan’s implied sexual dalliances with his middle-aged female customers in the salon’s backroom. Even Zohan’s romance with the salon’s Palestinian owner played by Canadian Emmanuelle Chriqui seems like an after thought. And even though Judd Apatow’s name is one the script, don’t expect any of his enlightened and inspired comedic timing; he hasn’t been involved in this script for years. But then again, name writing talent didn’t help Chuck & Larry, which was co-scripted by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor of Election and Sideways fame.

In the end though, Zohan benefits from having a few absurdist laughs and enough gratuitous shots of Sandler’s bare backside to do you for a lifetime. It’s typical of the comic’s recent films: a mishmash of two desperately different tones that are trying to exist in the hyper-active reality of Billy Madison and The Waterboy. If there’s a saving grace, it’s that Zohan doesn’t cry after, regretfully, thrusting his bulging man-bush one too many times. I know that the rest of us were shedding tears of a