On the face of it, You Don't Mess with the Zohan sounds utterly ridiculous and, to be honest, it is. But Happy Madison productions constantly exhibit their brand of stupid, overzealous, comic overtones in their releases.

On screen, Adam Sandler is a man of limited capabilities when it comes to accents.

His only variant is when he plays squeaky-voiced simpletons such as Billy Madison in the film of the same name and Bobby Boucher in The Waterboy.

But in playing Zohan Dvir, an Israeli special forces soldier, his attempt at adopting a Middle Eastern twang is quite frankly abysmal.

After witnessing Zohan at the point of rock stardom, thanks to his Special Forces exploits, he begins to experience feelings of dissatisfaction with his illustrious career in security.

Secretly, he dreams of becoming a hairdresser. The macho killing machine - we are asked to believe - apparently fancies his chances of styling hair in New York.

Zohan sees his chance of disappearing when his Palestinian arch-enemy The Phantom (John Turturro) engages him in a battle on the beach.

The Phantom believes he has killed Zohan, but our hairy hero fakes his own death to escape his military life in the Middle East.

Zohan then makes his way to New York where, after a lot of grovelling, and sweeping up copious amounts of hair for free in a salon run by Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui), he is finally allowed to style paying customers.

Zohan's unorthodox approach of making hair 'silky smooth' proves to be a hit with the OAP clientele (his extra services after the haircut prove to be equally popular).

With an overtly sexual approach to cutting hair, with far too much attention given to his inflated crotch, some scenes can be painful to watch.

It's not long before another bad guy is on the scene, Mr Boxing announcer himself Michael Buffer, who plays Walbridge, a property developer who wants to tear down Dalia's saloon to make way for a shopping mall.

Zohan's approach is simple: don't take anything lying down.

After Walbridge tries to divide the already tender relations between the Israelis and Palestinians in the neighbourhood, Zohan manages to unite the fierce rivals as they pit their wits against the property mogul.

The film plays it safe on the political front, with a few light gags along the way, but the risk assessment goes straight out of the window when it comes to the flamboyant behaviour of Zohan in New York.

Sandler certainly won't be winning any new fans with this movie, but he'll probably keep hold of the ones he's already secured who like this kind of inane slapstick comedy.

 5/10