Cast: Adam Sandler, Burt Reynolds, Chris Rock
Direction: Peter Segal

The first few sequences are the shortest and most enjoyable part of "The Longest Yard".

Playing a slothful, self-serving creepy toy-boy to a hot-shot female executive, Adam Sandler locks his disgusted girlfriend in her wardrobe, takes off in her favourite car and bangs it all over the city as news channels catch up with his perverse antics.

Good for him. But just when you brace yourself for a rollicking ride across a rugged road to brainlessness, "The Longest Yard" becomes a prison drama.

Sandler is pushed, kicked, pummelled and thrashed by the prison authorities. So is this going to be one of those torture-till-you-howl thrillers like the Sylvester Stallone starrer "Lock Up", or that classic on incarcerated indignity, "Midnight Express"?

The indignity suffered in watching Sandler do his wry comic act is something altogether different from what we saw in other prison movies. Let's not forget, director Peter Segal has made two very seriously funny films with Sandler in the lead.

In "Anger Management", Segal had cast Sandler as a guy managing... his anger! In "50 First Dates", Sandler was busy managing cute Drew Barrymore as she suffered a series of memory lapses.

In "The Longest Yard", Sandler just about manages to pass muster. The nervous energy that flows out of the self-consciously macho plot is more sweaty than productive. The characters are laid out across the brittle canvas with scant regard for credibility or continuity.

The prison where Sandler, with the help of incarcerated football coach Burt Reynolds (who incidentally played the lead in the 1974 version of the same story), puts together a football team is splattered with stereotypes -- including a group of gay guys dressed up as pom-pom girls for the game.

Gay jokes are a rudimentary part of this raunchy ride into humour. The actors try hard to ride the tacky terrain of timorous titters, but are largely defeated by the frivolity of the material.

Nonetheless, Sandler is in great shape here, being his blasé self, imbuing a sense of prideful ennui to his role of a freeloader who redeems himself by going back to his roots as a professional.

One only wishes that the football game had been interwoven into a more substantial canvas. Most of the way, the characters are more self important than satirical. Jokes about colour prejudice in prison and on the playing field are played out on an evil pitch.

You can't bring yourself to care for these leftovers from mainstream society as stereotypes or as individuals.

What you can do is enjoy their prankish mission to become overnight football players. The whole game plan is conducted with considerable energy and excitement. Sandler and his screen-mates Chris Rock and Burt Reynolds carry the film on their shoulders. But often you wonder if the material provided is worth their effort.