Adam Sandler's 8 Crazy Nights Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)December 20th, 2002
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A week ago, if somebody had asked me which Thanksgiving release would contain more songs - Disney's Treasure Planet or Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights - I probably would have bet all the guns in Texas on the former. And I would have been dead wrong. I also would have been dead wrong at that time about the possibility of Nights being dreadfully stupid. Okay, it's totally stupid, but it's also the most stirring holiday film since Prancer, and the best animated musical since South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.
Granted, I'm among the film's lowbrow target audience, but even people who can only take Sandler in small doses should be surprised at how oddly touching Nights is. It would have been a lot better if Sandler didn't provide the voices for the film's three main characters, however. One of them is so fucking annoying that you'll want to grab the closest living organism to you and shake it until it stops moving. Other than that (and enough product placement to fund 33 movies), Nights is packed full of funny songs, gags revolving mostly around feces, and...well, that's about it. But that's all some people need.
Traditionally animated (think boring Don-Bluth-style), Nights opens on the first night of Chanukah (that's where the title gets its name, Einstein), where we see Davey Stone (voiced by Sandler) running out on a bill at a Chinese restaurant in dumpy Dukesberry. Stone, we are told by the narrator (Rob Schneider), is the town asshole. Nobody likes him, and he returns their unfriendly sentiments, usually via the extension of his middle finger. Davey is also a Jew (call him Ebenezer Scroogenstein), but I guess we're supposed to assume people hate him because he's a dick, and not because they're all small-town anti-Semites.
After the restaurant dine-and-dash, Davey is nabbed by the cops and dragged into court, where he's given a choice - do a dime in the pokey, or assist an 80-year-old rec-league basketball ref named Whitey Duvall (also Sandler). Davey chooses the latter, yet still continues to act like a douche to everyone around him - even Whitey and his twin sister Eleanore (Sander...again), who has diabetes and looks like Little Enid from Daniel Clowes' Ghost World comics. Eventually, Davey begins to soften - right around the same time we learn why he's such a twat. Also coming to light is Davey's realization that the doe-eyed single mother of a 12-year-old rec-leaguer happens to be the same girl he used to crush on before he turned evil. How he didn't know this, especially in a town the size of Dukesberry, is one of the funniest parts of the film, albeit completely unintentional.
It's worth going to see Nights just for the attached trailer for Sandler's upcoming Anger Management (with Jack Nicholson) and the unexpected live-action short about Sandler's dog Meatball and his various adventures. The bonus is the surprisingly decent quality of the feature.
1:11 - PG-13 for frequent crude and sexual humor, drinking and brief drug references
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