Little Nicky

rental shelf, but even he has made the occasional winner, one of the best being Little Nicky. For some reason it's panned over other far worse ones he's churned out of the gumball machine (ever re-watch Billy Madison? What the hell were we/they thinking back then?), but when you part the curtains of Sandler Stigma™ and really just look at what the movie is in itself, it's a hoot. What other film can boast Rodney Dangerfield playing Harvey Keitel's dad in heell? That's right, Keitel is the red beast himself, coming down off a ten thousand year unholy monarchy, with no plans to retire. This infuriates his two wicked sons, played by Tiny Lister (must have been a different devil-mom) and a slick Rhys Ifans. They depart the inferno and set up their own devilish franchise up in New York City, raising all kinds of hell, the most amusing of which is lowering the drinking age to ten (where were these guys when I was that age?) and forcing Regis Philbin to say naughty things on live primetime. Their younger, slightly retarded brother Nicky (Sandler) must pursue them on their haunts and trap them in a magic flask before it's too late. Dumb concept, right? Sure it is, but try and tell me it's not hilarious m, especially with the amount of inane visual gags and trippy production design these folks have dreamed up. Between Hitler dressed as a slutty maid getting a pineapple repeatedly rammed up his rectum to a giant gorilla massaging mammaries that have sprouted on a dude's head like fleshy succulent pigtails, there's no shortage of wtf moments. Sander picks an odd character mask as usual, sporting a metal-head swoosh of a haircut and lisping his way through his lines sounding like he had a stroke from watching Billy Madison dailies one too many times. Patricia Arquette is in it, as a sweet, shy girl he meets topside and the closest thing to a sane person you'll find in this madhouse. Cameos abound, from usual Sandler cronies like Jon Lovitz, Rob Schneider, Kevin Nealon, Dana Carvey, Peter Dante and Allen Covert, to randoms like Michael McKean, Clint Howard, Laura Harring, Henry Winkler, Ozzy Osborne, Reese Witherspoon as Nicky's angelic mom and Quentin Tarantino as a blind preacher. I don't really know what else to say about the thing, because its it's own thing and you either rock out with it, or you don't. Visually it's never boring, the script was conceived in the toilet and jumped straight to the gutter, the performances are all garishly obnoxious and the overall tone is that of an sixth grade birthday party gone rogue.

I must be missing something here. I was under the impression that this was some kind of comedy. Evidently not. Oh well, at least there are a raft of top class actors and comedians queuing up for cameos and supporting roles – maybe they will be able to inject some class into proceedings. Nothing doing there either, I'm afraid.

This is rubbish. Thoughtless, childish pap that adds considerable credence to the notion that Adam Sandler is as overrated as he is irritating. It is a sad state of affairs when filmmakers believe they can simply unleash this goofy, rubber-faced moron on a trusting and frankly deluded public and gleefully scoop up gazillions of dollars in takings. But why wouldn't they think that? Sandler is a veritable Box Office cash cow.

This has been a mystery to me for years. Sandler is a comedian who (in his films at least) HAS NO GAGS! Not only does he not do jokes, but his physical comedy is pretty ordinary too. His success is based purely on the pathos generated by the losers he plays. The man is obviously no mug. He has worked out that producers are falling over themselves to offer him twenty million bucks a throw to fall over a couple of times and wear bad 1980s clothing. Nice work if you can get it.

I will grudgingly give him The Wedding Singer where he fortuitously stumbled on some decent chemistry with Drew Barrymore, but aside from that his movies are generally overly sentimental and woefully short on substance.

Little Nicky is another opportunity to build a weak, convoluted story around one of Sandler's lovable schmucks. Well they got it half right. His eponymous 'hero' (and I use the term in its loosest possible sense) is certainly a schmuck, but he is about as lovable as herpes.

Nicky is the youngest son of the Devil (Harvey Keitel. Really.). When Dad reaches pensionable age (10,000 years in this case), he is supposed to retire and hand over the reins to an heir. Not believing any of his diabolical offspring suitable for the job, he decides to stay in charge himself. This incenses his other two sons (Rhys Ifans and Tom Lister Jr) and they decide to snub life in Hades in favour of running riot up on Earth. Their departure freezes over the gates of Hell and begins to physically debilitate old Satan. If parity cannot be restored and the naughty boys returned down below, Harvey is in serious danger of disappearing into thin air (which, it strikes me, would actually be a blessing).

Anyway, sweet-natured, not-evil-enough-to-rule, Earth-virgin Nicky is dispatched up to retrieve his errant brothers. With hilarious consequences, obviously. Well, I guess that's the theory.

But the expected barrage of fish-out-of-water stereotypes never materialises. Instead, there are a series of bizarre, contrived scenes many of which centre around the toilet habits of an annoying talking dog.

The biggest problem (and there are many) is Sandler. His previous characters may have been absurdly insipid and one-dimensional, but at least he injected them with a modicum of warmth. A thirty-four year old man shuffling about in a duffel coat and trying to portray a blushing adolescent is more frightening than cute. He is severely hindered by an appalling nasal whine that may have sounded amusing on a thirty second Saturday Night Live skit, but begins to grate when affected for the entire duration of a ninety-minute feature. He sounds like a cross between a hood on the Sopranos and Muttley out of the Wacky Races. In short, the character is decidedly unlovely, borderline creepy and, most importantly, relentlessly unfunny.

No supporting cast can sustain a lead like that. Keitel, Rodney Dangerfield, Quentin Tarantino, Patricia Arquette and Reese Witherspoon (as a Clueless-cliché angel) do not disgrace themselves but won't see this as their finest hour. Ifans at least looks like he's approached the project with his tongue firmly in his cheek. His perpetual look of amused bewilderment almost made me smile. Almost.

Dreadful.

4/10

Little Nicky (2000) Adam Sandler, Patricia Arquette, Harvey Keitel, Rhys Ifans, Tom ‘Tiny' Lister Jr., Rodney Dangerfield, Allen Covert, Peter Dante, Quentin Tarantino, Reese Witherspoon, Dana Carvey, Michael McKean, Ozzy Osbourne, D: Steven Brill. As Satan nears retirement, he'll hand over the task to rule Hell to one of his three sons. But when two of them leave Hell, the damned souls come in, and thereby the devil starts to die. So his only hope is to send off his `good son' Nicky, who has no evil in him whatsoever, to The Big Apple to bring back his brothers-who are wreaking the city. Uproarious and predictable, this juvenile comedy has a lot of sexually crude and awkwardly weird gags, and near the end, it gets sentimental. Though some of the actors appear in funny roles, especially Keitel as Satan, you'll get bored hearing Sandler doing another one of his speech impediment tricks. Written by Sandler. Running Time: 93 minutes and rated PG-13 for crude humor, sexual situations, language, drug use. * ½

Satan has decided to stay in charge of Hell for a few more years, a decision that enrages two of his sons (Adrian and Cassius) who decide to create their own Hell on Earth and rule there instead. Whenever they leave Hell, Satan's powers begin to fade and has less than a week before he will be destroyed. With no choice but to send his third, weaker son, Satan sends Nicky to Earth to capture his brothers and bring them back to Hell and restore the norm. However the simple and naïve Nicky struggles to cut it in the real world.

I will always give Adam Sadler films a go because I often find just about enough moments of inspired lunacy among the puerile and pretty unfunny material. Sadly, this outing sees such a terrible plot combined with awful acting, unfunny writing, tired special effects and crude joking and almost no moments that took me by surprise and made me laugh. Instead the film is just plain stupid with very few laughs in it at all. Of course it may well appeal to some with its silly humour and its silly crude joking but personally it was pretty laugh free and the whole idea of the film was too dumb and silly to really work. The actual plot is never a really strong aspect of any Sadler film but here it is just all over the place. It is not that it makes no sense, it is more that it lacks any sense of fun at all and the dark tone is totally misjudged and the usual moments of inspired craziness is really limited to one or two moments (the best being the Fonz covered in bees!).

The cr*p script is not helped at all by a cast that is either rubbish or wasted. Sadler himself falls into the 'rubbish' camp with a performance that is like his usual mugging but even more unbearable. With his twisted expression and nasty voice, he was actually painful to watch – and this is not based on a hatred of Sadler (I loved him in Punchdrunk a few days ago) it is based on the fact that this is a terrible performance with nothing but a terrible idea and a terrible character to work with. The support cast is made up of plenty of well-known faces but few are used well at all and too many of them are embarrassing. Keitel falls into the latter category and he has a thankless role that is not worthy of his talent. Ifans and Lister are given hard work by mostly doing voice work with poor dialogue (in their heads) and they were not funny at all. Arquette is given nothing to do at all but still manages to be lame and annoying. The various cameos are mixed – Taratino is just dumb; Dangerfield is OK but not given enough time; Weathers, Witherspoon, Witherspoon and others are all given nothing to do other than show their faces but Lovitz and Schneider at least provide some unexpected weirdness in very minor roles.

Overall, Sadler films are normally average at best but I must say that I found this to be devoid of all but the slightest hint of the inspired humour that he can often create. The story is stupid and silly, the acting both bad and embarrassing, the script filled with misfiring jokes that are mostly in bad taste as well as being unfunny (a bad combination). A real waste of time that will only appeal to the most die-hard fans of Sadler and those that only like their comedy to be very basic indeed.

Ever hear of a movie that is suppose to be the extreme of one sort or another that doesn't live up to its billing? Little Nicky is one of those films. Roasted upon its release as one of the worst films of all time Little Nicky turns out to be an okay comedy. Actually this is the kind of movie that has all of the ingredients to be a screamingly funny comedy, but somehow things don't work.

Nicky, the son of the devil and an angel is sent to make his way in the world while one of his many brothers tries to take throne of Hell from their father. Casting everyone from Harvey Keitel to Rodney Dangerfield this is a film that fits into the Adam Sandler universe since several characters from some of his other films appear. Its a film that on star power alone should work, but it never catches fire. Sure there are laughs but on the whole nothing ever hangs together to form a full movie. I've seen the film several times and can't figure out what went wrong. Even Adam Sandler as Nicky, in one of the worst portrayals in screen history, isn't the reason this doesn't work. There is something else, some other reason.

Still its worth seeing if you like okay comedies. It never scales the heights its ideas and bits say it should be reaching. If its on try it and see if its for you, you certainly could do worse.