Adam Sandler continues along as comedy’s golden boy.
In this outing Sandler has buoyed his name to a shameless and boorish animated film called “Eight Crazy
Nights”.
In the film Sandler embodies three of the characters voices. Mean-spirited
dropout, Davey Stone (voiced by and looks like Sandler) is the grinch of the
sleepy nook Dukesberry.
Stone terrorizes and does his best to make the town citizens have a horrible Christmas. During one of his drinking binges, Davey
goes to far and ends up in court. To save Davey from going to prison, Davey’s old basketball coach, Whitey (voiced also by Sandler), asks the judge for pity and suggests Davey coach the town’s youth basketball team. Whitey and his fraternal twin Eleanor (also Sandler) invite Davey to stay with them as the three develop a sort of love/hate relationship.
As this film trickled by, I found myself wanting to exit the theatre. The animation was boring and the music made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I can safely say that I disliked this film however through dumb luck I could see what Sandler could have been trying to do.
We all remember those classic TV holiday cartoons that starred “Rudolph”, “Santa
Claus” and “Frosty”. The classic stories brought to life in the 1960’s version of “Claymation”. We all remember those epic tales that introduced us to likes of Yukon Cornelius and Land of Misfit Toys.
In Eight Crazy Nights, I think these films are addressed but the full parody is never realized. It would have been hilarious if the film was made like one of those cartoons. Those cartoons had songs, narration and characters realizing the value of Christmas. The way the film’s narration is handled almost reminded me of Burl Ives from the classic “Rudolph” cartoon. How about those crazy reindeer, they do look a lot like “Rudolph”. I think the full idea behind “Eight Crazy Nights” was to poke jokes at those classic cartoons cause it’s very evident in the film itself.
The songs in the classic cartoons were quite irritating but we sat through them because we loved the stories. This isn’t true in this film. I felt nothing for any of the characters and all I wanted to do is scream Sandler’s classic line, “Oh, Shut Up!” Some of the songs reminded me of Sandler’s Opera-Man character from “Saturday Night Live”. He would sing in a very dumb over-acted voice and talk about celebrities.
I have always said that Sandler is a great comedic talent when his talents are used in a way they are supposed to be. Sandler’s next project “Anger Management” with Jack Nicholson looks to be one of those projects.
If you are up for animation this holiday weekend, why not checkout Treasure Planet, instead. You won’t be sorry.
(1 out of 5)
So Says the Soothsayer.
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