Way back in the silent era, Cecil B. DeMille figured out that you could say one thing and do another in movies.

In his case, he made Biblical epics of Old Testament debauchery, secure in the knowledge as long as God had the last word, the sex was okay. Audiences were stimulated, and still managed to feel churchy.

Times change, but some lessons are not lost. The straightest, most clueless movie about gays in decades, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is a generic Adam Sandler movie that feels itself free to indulge its junior high mentality, toss around the word "faggot," introduce a parade of flaming stereotypes (without a single gay character who doesn't fit the Village People hack-comedy profile) and every butt-pirate euphemism imaginable -- all because of its weepy last half-hour when everybody learns a valuable lesson.

That lesson, of course, is gays are people too. Funny people, who wear horribly tacky clothes and talk funny and need the help of Adam Sandler's fists the way the Amish needed Harrison Ford's. But people nonetheless.

As you may know from the trailers, The King Of Queens (snicker I said Queen!) Kevin James plays Larry, a widowed fireman who for some bureaucratic reason can't get his kids listed as his beneficiary under his pension plan.

So, given the choice of waiting a few months to straighten out red tape or committing a felony, he enlists his pal Chuck (Sandler) to commit to a fake "marriage" (performed in Canada, of course).

Now Sandler is a guy so insecure, he can't make a movie where he doesn't punch someone.

So if he's going to be playing someone even PRETENDING to be gay, his character is going to be the straightest guy alive.

Chuck is a Fireman Calendar model, who seduces women by looking at them, sometimes several at a time.

He has boxes of XL condoms delivered to his house (breeder, please).

And of course, even as a putative gay man, he loosens the pants of Jessica Biel, who plays Chuck and Larry's lawyer, defending them from the accusations of a strangely gay-ish insurance investigator (Steve Buscemi).

But then we all knew Sandler was a stud-muffin. I mean, look at all the women who line up to see Adam Sandler movies.

And well he should protect his masculinity. After all, no less a testosterone factory than Ving Rhames turns into a girl in this movie after his surly fireman character "comes out." That gay thing is pretty pernicious.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is a true Sandler production, with the full repertory entourage that depends on him to pay the rent, including director Dennis Dugan, David Spade and Rob Schneider. For some, like Spade, it's an opportunity to do drag with all the commitment of a Saturday Night Live sketch and less.

For Schneider, in the most jaw-dropping I-can't-believe-they're-doing-this scene in the movie, it's a chance to put on Coke-bottle glasses, turn "R's" into "L's" and hack off Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany's. (Schneider plays the wedding-chapel owner in Niagara Falls who keeps calling for "the ling!")

The thing is, the fans who love Sandler more the lower he aims, are the least likely to want to sit still for a final-act lecture about treating gays with dignity.

(This film is rated 14-A)
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