You Don't Mess With The Zohan

The off-the-wall comedy of Robert Smigel and Judd Apatow leaves a mark on the script, but it would require a talent of Peter Sellers' magnitude to conquer this material, and he's not around.

The movie "Munich" should have been. At the very least, it's got to be the first picture to use smelly-feet jokes as a means of parsing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But more than that, it's a mainstream movie that dares to make jokes about the kinds of complex political realities that most of us don't dare bring up at dinner parties.

By the end of the film, the cliché of everybody getting along is reduced to both sides working together in the ultimate monument to capitalism: a mall. Some message.

It's also heavily reliant on cultural references to Jews and Palestinians and cliched views of how Americans see Middle Eastern immigrants. It shows Sandler at his silliest, and has occasional amusing moments, but you have to be a very forgiving fan to cope with its near two-hour running time.

As another run-of-the-mill Sandler movie, it is better than most. At this point it seems a little foolish to want, let alone expect, "more" from the guy. If he can't be bothered to put more effort into his films, why should anybody else?

The comedy star's legions of fans will welcome the cheerfully crude proceedings as a return to silliness after several earnest, lower-key character turns. The melange of Middle East diplomacy, action absurdity, sexual healing and, when in doubt, hummus, wavers between muscular and middling. It's a surefire hit.

Despite a mid-career attempt at breaking out of his comfort zone with the likes of Punch Drunk Love and Spanglish, America's favourite man-child has recently returned to his routinely mediocre and mildly misogynist formula. Depressingly, the originality of his early delights like Happy Gilmore has been replaced by a predictable Carry On-esque mix of scatological gags, sex jokes, animal cruelty and a Rob Schneider cameo.