Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights

Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights

MOVIE REVIEW May the Lord have mercy on the poor families who stumble upon “Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights” thinking it’s a cute animated holiday comedy. There’s no cheer in Sandlerville, which is why this film has a PG-13 rating for “frequent and crude sexual humor.” The MPAA neglected to mention it, but there is also much scatological humor; all those defecation jokes are in keeping with Sandler’s inexplicable obsession with bodily fluids.

So if it isn’t a family film what is it? Maybe fans of “Jackass” will enjoy the scene where Davey, our hero, slams a kindly old man into a Port a Potty and pushes it down a hill. When the old man emerges at the bottom, he’s drenched from head to toe in excrement. Then Davey sprays him with a garden hose, and he freezes solid. Ho ho.

Davey (who looks like Adam Sandler and sounds like Adam Sandler) is “a 33-year old crazy Jewish guy,” according to the movie, who finds himself before the judge following his most recent arrest this time for public drunkenness. The judge wants to put him away for good, but kindly old Whitey (also voiced by Sandler) speaks up: Whitey says he referees the local youth basketball league and could use an assistant. So the judge releases Davey into Whitey’s custody without explaining why he believes this drunkard would be an ideal role model for anyone.

Whitey and his twin sister Eleanore (Sandler again) take Davey into their home, yet he remains stubbornly ill-mannered not to mention pathologically violent — until that moment when every bad movie feels compelled to collapse into peace and love among men etc., etc. If ever there was a movie where you felt cheated by an upbeat ending, it’s this one.

I can see why Sandler might want to do a raunchy cartoon in the style of “South Park,” but I don’t understand why he had to anchor it with Christmas and Hanukkah. The advertising will inevitably utilize holiday imagery, and most people will not associate those images with a movie this angry and vulgar. There also is an odd disconnect between Sandler’s pride in his Jewishness, which is genuine and commendable, and his willingness to expose this obnoxious Jewish character to an audience that may not get the joke.

The main idea here is that Davey had became completely lost due to alcoholism and anti-social neurosis, and he was saved by the elf-like saints Whitey and Eleanore, as well as his work with the basketball team, which has a positive impact on him. But it’s all too easy. The movie wallows in the scatological stuff, lingers over it, piles on more than is necessary for comic effect; it is also longer than an hour (or a lifetime).

Nothing wrong with happy endings; they should be earned, not added because you think you have to have one. Did Sandler ever consider that he could touch his bases and make his points without making a film that was quite so offensive? That was sweet and cheerful and family-oriented? Does he think this will bring them in? Yes, I have argued against the requirement that ethnic groups must present “positive” images of themselves in movies.

I defended Better Luck Tomorrow (2002), directed by Justin Lin, about criminal Chinese-American teenagers; Skins (2002), directed by Chris Eyre, about alcoholics and vigilantes on an Indian reservation; Barbershop (2003), directed by Tim Story, with its free-for-all African-American dialogue. But those films are aimed at audiences who can understand them decode them as their directors hoped they would be decoded.

Will Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights get people into theaters for reasons having nothing to do with the material? What are Adam Sandler’s fans going to take home from this movie? His most recent film before this one was Punch-Drunk Love (2002), inspired and wonderful indie work that wasn’t received well among his fans.

I heard from readers appalled by their audiences’ laughter during scenes that weren’t funny before they walked out of the theater in disgust. How does someone tell “his audience” apart from himself when both they and he are sitting in the dark of a movie theater? It’s easy: Inappropriate laughter, especially during “serious” moments. Sandler has painted himself into a corner.

His comedies have always included generous amounts of antisocial hostility, sudden violence, dodgy material about urination, defecation and flatulence, and a general air of defiance. A lot of people like that. But they’re not going to understand the Hanukkah message in Eight Crazy Nights. And the people who will appreciate the message probably won’t be able to stomach a lot of the other stuff in the film. What he has made here is a movie for neither audience.

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