Adam Sandler’s Israeli accent (plus his stammering multiple negatives: “No-no-no-no-no”) seems like a sufficient base for a spy comedy revolving around a hirsute agent of Mossad, a sort of anti-Munich if you please. But the jokes stray a long way off the base and in diverse directions: the hero’s superhuman powers (snagging a bullet in his nostril, doing no-hands pushups, etc.); his pursuit, in America, of his secret desire to cut hair (“I just want to make people silky smooth”); his time-warp sense of fashion, gleaned from a disco-era Paul Mitchell catalogue; his sexual predilection for grateful old biddies; his, or rather (one and the same) the writer-producer’s, Pollyannish appeal for peaceful coexistence; and the hypocritical stigmatization, since somebody has to be the bad guy, of the corporate money-grubber — anybody, to be more particular, besides those altruists at Happy Madison Productions and Sony Pictures. Just as Sandler’s accent could seem a sufficient comic base, John Turturro might seem an adequate comic adversary as a Palestinian terrorist and fast-food entrepreneur, but this would be hard to verify on the laugh-meter. There are good-sized parts, too, for an all but unrecognizable grease-painted Rob Schneider, Lainie Kazan, Nick Swardson, and Emmanuelle Chriqui as a Palestinian cutie-pie, and bite-sized parts for Shelley Berman, Chris Rock, Kevin Nealon, Mariah Carey, and John McEnroe — and not enough laughs to go around even were they sliced into thin smiles. Directed by Dennis Dugan. (2008) — Duncan Shepherd
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