Starring Adam Sandler, Emmanuelle Chriqui, and John Turturro. Rated 14A.

In You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, a reinvigorated Adam Sandler plunges wholeheartedly into the title role of an Israeli commando who wishes everybody could just get along. Nobody hassles him about his Daisy Duke–style cutoffs and a mop top that went out with Gino Vanelli. Maybe it’s because the super-nimble Zohan can do everything from kicking through walls to catching flying bullets with his teeth. (Don’t even ask what he can do with his freakishly agile buttocks.) The problem? Zohan is burned-out from all the meaningless violence. His dream is to become a hairstylist. So he fakes his own death, moves to Manhattan, and tries to get a job at a major salon.

The only salon owner who’ll take a chance on Zohan is Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui), a sweet Palestinian hottie whose modest business is barely surviving. It doesn’t take long for Zohan to charm Dalia’s elderly clientele. Soon he’s turning a quick wash and snip into sizzling foreplay and—shades of The Producers—treating eager female pensioners to a little bonus shtupping. Before long, the blue-rinse set is lining up for service.

Things get complicated when a conniving real-estate magnate sets his sights on redeveloping Dalia’s neighbourhood just as Zohan’s new life is disrupted by his former nemesis, the Phantom (a perfectly cast John Turturro). Although there’s a low-key message of brotherhood that peeks out between laughs, director Dennis Dugan keeps things cheerfully vulgar. At best, the script—credited to Sandler, Saturday Night Live writer-animator Robert Smigel, and current Hollywood golden boy Judd Apatow—is a bit like what you’d get if Mel Brooks rewrote Shampoo. Not too shabby. But even at its most self-indulgent—much of the humour is aimed squarely at the crotch—this is easily Adam Sandler’s most ingratiating movie in years.