Sometime after “Punch-Drunk Love,” but not before “Mr. Deeds,” someone slipped Adam Sandler a chill pill. Long known for playing bellowing, red-faced ninnies, the actor has struck an altogether mellower chord in his recent roles: The lovelorn vet in “50 First Dates,” the cuckolded chef in “Spanglish.”

Once again, it's the fact that Sandler doesn't fly off the handle — despite getting beaten around like a bowl of egg whites — that makes his performance in “The Longest Yard” so coolly un-Sandlerish.

As Paul Crewe, a disgraced ex-NFL quarterback who looks for gridiron redemption in the prison yard, the former “Saturday Night Live” funnyman is kicked in the sternum, billy-clubbed in the gut and cracked over the skull. Adding the proverbial insult to injury, he gets propositioned by a tranny cheerleader.

Any of these indignities would have spun the old Sandler into a cyclone of rage and Bob Barker abuse.

But not Crewe. He suffers them with weary eyes and a resigned grin, as if to say: “Yeah, I made ‘Little Nicky.’ Maybe I deserve it.” And he does, which is part of the fun.

Surprisingly, fun is never in short supply in “The Longest Yard,” a cameo-studded romp that's zanier — and perhaps even funnier — than the 1974 original. Crewe leads the police on a drunken car chase one night and earns himself a three-year ticket to Allenville Penitentiary, smack-dab in the middle of Texas football country.

There he strikes a deal with the conniving warden to put together an all-inmate football squad to scrimmage against the prison guards — a mean, muscular bunch who compete in a semi-pro prison league.

Though Crewe gets only a motley handful of volunteers, he soon persuades the prison yard studs (one of whom is played by hip-hop star Nelly) to join the team, using their hatred of authority as a crude but effective recruiting tool.

Burt Reynolds, who starred in the original, makes a nostalgic if essentially pointless return as a pigskin old-timer who helps Crewe shape the team into greatness. Football enthusiasts will also recognize former pros Bill Romanowski and Michael Irvin.

“The Longest Yard” could represent the rarest of cinematic phenomena: A comedy remake that actually out-humors the original.

The suddenly ubiquitous Chris Rock, as Allenville's wiseacre black-market supply man Caretaker, makes that happen by himself, popping off with his usual wit. When Crewe pooh-poohs one of Allenville's cross-dressing “girls,” Rock's response is wickedly un-PC: “He looks ugly now, but in eight months, he'll look like Beyonce!”