REVIEWED: THE LONGEST YARD As a pro-footballer who whips together a prison team, Adam Sandler is laughable - as opposed to funny - in this pitiful remake, writes Donald ClarkeFULL CINEMA LISTINGS PAGES 13-16

Life is too short for us to spend more than an instant debating which is the weaker of the two remakes of Robert Aldrich's 1974 gridiron-in-prison romp, The Longest Yard. The Mean Machine, that awful British thing with Vinnie Jones, was certainly cheaper and rougher. But this Adam Sandler vehicle probably takes the unwanted prize for its noisiness and unnecessary length.

Even the not inconsiderable pleasures provided by the vision of Sandler being repeatedly pummelled with truncheons and flattened by line-backers can compensate for the film's unforgivable slackness. The thing is so carelessly thrown together one almost yearns for Vinnie to return and beat some bloody order into it.

The plot remains satisfactory. Sandler, a once successful quarterback subsequently accused of game fixing, is sent to prison after drunkenly ramming his girlfriend's sports car into a number of police vehicles.

The warden (a less than genial James Cromwell) invites him to coach a team of prisoners in a game against the screws. Difficulties announce themselves, but they are outnumbered by subsequent rewards.

Adam Sandler as an American footballer? There is certainly something dangerous - or perhaps just creepy - about the actor, but he has never seemed overburdened with the explosive energy that that sport demands.

Still, even he is more convincing than Burt Reynolds, star of Aldrich's original, who appears as an old-timer who was once a coach. The nips and tucks prison doctors provide these days are really quite remarkable.