PRETTY WITTY, AND GAY.

Byline: BOB STRAUSS

>FILM CRITIC

Adam Sandler's contribution to this year's gay-friendly movie trend, "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry," is surprisingly sensitive and respectful.

Unless you're Asian. Or a woman.

Still, from a cheap burlesque vendor like Sandler, we'd expect a movie about two straight buddies pretending they're gay to be much worse than this. Most of the issues such a scam would dredge up are addressed, some even with a bracing amount of complexity. Credit that to a script polish by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, the team that wrote the perceptive, Payne-directed character comedies "Sideways," "About Schmidt" and the like.

Don't know if they were responsible for all the fat and toilet humor. That stuff's more in keeping with the work of director Dennis Dugan. His movies include "Problem Child," "The Benchwarmers" and Sandler vehicles "Happy Gilmore" and "Big Daddy."

But dumb as some of the jokes are, it can confidently be said that "Chuck & Larry" is the smartest thing Dugan has ever made for the big screen.

It's a story about a man crush and male bonding, all right; just not that kind of love. Brooklyn firefighters Chuck Levine (Sandler) and Larry Valentine (Kevin James) are as brave and true and capable as they come. Larry saves Chuck's life in a situation that leaves them both hospitalized, which gets widowed father of two Larry to fretting about his kids' future. Due to bureaucratic blundering, only a new spouse can inherit Larry's benefits, and the one person he can trust to do right by the children is Chuck.

A hound-dog bachelor prone to multiple bimbo all-nighters, Chuck owes his life to Larry. So he reluctantly agrees to become his work partner's domestic partner. Since this is, technically, fraud, the pair have to pretend to be gayer and gayer in order to convince a skeptical city investigator (Steve Buscemi, overdoing it) that their nonexistent love is true. To complicate things further, the couple retains lawyer Alex McDonough, who's played by Jessica Biel at her superhottest. She wants to be girlfriends with Chuck but, naturally, he falls in love for the first time in his life. He can't tell Alex he's straight, of course, which leads to some fairly clever romantic farce.

Nevertheless, the movie objectifies women to an inhuman degree (even Biel has to wear a skintight, plunging catsuit). And Rob Schneider's cameo as a Japanese wedding chapel minister sets racial relations back at least 36 years, to when Mickey Rooney's clownishness in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" went way too over the top.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK AND LARRY

>PG-13: nudity, language, sexual situations, violence, prejudice.

>Starring: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Jessica Biel, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, Dan Aykroyd.

>Director: Dennis Dugan.

>Running time: 1 hr. 55 min.

>Playing: Citywide.

>In a nutshell: Comedy about two straight firemen who become domestic partners for benefits purposes is unusually thoughtful -- and almost sophisticated -- for a Sandler vehicle.

>Our rating: Three stars

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Kevin James and Adam Sandler play firefighters who pretend to be a gay couple in "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry."