Product: Eight Crazy Nights [VHS] (2002)
Rating: 2.0
You'd be better off getting another drediel....
by Dane YoussefOK, folks. Now here is a movie that will put you out of the Haunakah spirit as quickly as Ron Howard's live-action remake of "The Grinch" put people out of the Christmas spirit.A nasty piece too goofy to even be animated, it's Adam Sandler's first full-fledged animated musical "8 Crazy Nights."Every year, just about every TV show grinds out a puke-worthy Christmas special where the formula is something like this: Characters have spirit, something bad happens everyone has misfortune. Then... the split-second everyone suddenly obtains the holiday spirit... everyone's problems instantly evaporate. And everything everybody wants... suddenly fall into place...Apparently, because there's little hype and buzz around Haunakah, Sandler has decided to put some product out there (just like he did with his infamous SNL song "The Hanuakah Song"), but basically with this movie, all he's done is proved that there can be trite, tedious and tiresome holiday "specials" for Hanuakah, too.Is that a fight WORTH winning?I've enjoyed a lot of Adam Sandler's flicks, but this one had me annoyed, bored, disgusted and reaching for the remote after the first quarter.Sandler's obnoxious hateful slacker shtick has finally been beaten into the ground. He's been pushing this since he started making movies. His worst, by far, was "Little Nicky," but this movie is the equivalent of a reindeer turd.Adam Sandler stars (or rather, voices) as Davey, a delinquent who's gone downhill a life of crime and vandalism ever since early in his youth. He lives in a crummy trailer and is the Scrooge/Grinch of this little upstate town. He does his best at making plenty of enemies and getting on people's "*****" lists instead of Santa's good one. Alcohol and sleeping in don't help his personality much.Finally, after the town has had enough of his very presence (in my opinion, it took way too long), he gets caught during one of his vandalism through town and is thrown before a judge.Things look bad for Davey. But just then, when the judge is about to toss him in a State prison, the town's elderly volunteer youth-basketball coach (also voiced by Sandler) steps up and requests the idea of taking Davey under his wing and making him his assistant coach. Davey rudely rolls his eyes at this idea, but realizing it's either this or a decade in the slammer, he quickly signs up.OK, now see if any of this sounds familiar:Whitey's dream for the last 35 years has been to win the town highest honor--the annual town patch. Something they give to the town's most respected and beloved citizen.Davey doesn't think he'll ever make it. There's also a woman who Davey dated as a young preteen who has grown to despise who he is now. She has a kid who seems insecure and shy and needs a good father figure in his life. Davey hits bottom and realizes that...Well, you can put the rest together, can't you?But there's no fun along the way.I felt while watching this---a sense of disappointment and disinterest in everything that was going on. I felt like I should be enjoying this movie a lot more than I was. I could identify with this story. I used to be an excited and open-minded child. But my optimism and eager nature was met with a lot of crushing disappointment when I was little.Oh, his voice-over is strong enough. As Davey (his usual movie character), Whitey and Eleanor. And SNL/Sandler-movie regulars Jon Lovitz, Kevin Nealson and Rob Schnider make their trademark noteworthy points, but it's basically top-notch comedic actors out there reading the phone book.Davey is supposed to be a hero. At least that's how we're supposed to see him. As an angry kid who's lost touch with himself and attacks everyone who can find happiness--in places he can't. Bitter, angry, hateful and destructive---but underneath, there's a repressed likable guy trying to get out (In case you've ever seen an Adam Sandler movie, I'm not giving anything away).But me, I saw him as someone I'd run into oncoming traffic to avoid. Even when he goes though his "change of heart," he was still someone I would take a baseball bat to. Davey is the prototypical bully in almost every Hollywood movie. Here, he's supposed to be a hero.I guess that could work... if Davey wasn't constructed out of cardboard and as funny as the death of your family pet.As the town bully, he's a dick. As a reformed hero, he's a phony. For some reason, when Davey reformed, I didn't believe it for an instant. He's still an open crusty sore. Sandler is just pulling out the standard cope-out ending.But he's made a movie that's too profane and nasty for his ideal audience and too simple-minded, scatological and unimaginative for older viewers.The jokes are mostly just Sandler committing acts of destruction and violent behavior (either physical or emotional). There are some nice songs here and there (some mediocre though), but this movie is no holiday pick-me-up. If you walk into this movie in a seasonal mood, this will certainly take care of that.What's really unsettling is the artificial reform ending that I think these movies are required to have.Sandler's remix of "The Haunakah Song" was some of the best part of the movie (and so were a couple of his others). Like I said, there are a handful of funny jokes and catchy songs, but the bad far more than outnumbers the good.I hope Sandler chooses to evolve his style... at least a little.Was he ALWAYS like this? Is this just more of the same?Or am I just out-growing him?danessf@yahoo.comhttp://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid;=58175682http://movies.yahoo.com/mvc/durvl?iid=7-3771615&.crumb=tGxhXi4L%2Fi8&s;=mt_a