Be Unafraid. Be Very Unafraid.
Rating: 1/10
Running Time: 90 minutes
US Certificate: PG-13 UK Certificate: 12
On DVD
Delving into the movie-gazette.com archive, to my horror I realised that the films of crime against cinema Mr Adam Sandler have got a pretty easy ride. So, I thought I’d put that right with a review of one of his worst efforts.
The generally unintelligent, gross-out, plain unfunny humour of Sandler has become a staple of ‘The Sandler Movie’ and somehow it’s become popular with millions of fans throughout the world. Unsurprisingly, Little Nicky isn’t a satirical indictment of the consumer culture of the twenty-first century but rather follows the familiar mould that usually involves the audience being introduced to an unlikeable half-wit, who surprises both us and inexplicably a beautiful woman by improving and getting slightly less detestable over the first half of the film, before losing our confidence with a stupid mistake and then winning it back again with a rousing finale. Check, check and check as, in short, Nicky (Sandler), the mixed up son of an angel and the devil (Keitel), visits Earth to try and stop his two brothers (Ifans and Lister) from wreaking too much havoc and replacing his Dad as the devil after the brothers find out that they’re not the next in line to the big job in hell.
Little Nicky is an awful film that’s full of crude, unfunny jokes, over-the-top sight gags, and horrible performances from a pretty good cast. Sandler excruciatingly plays the devil’s son with a trademark autism and as if he’s had a stroke with his permanently weird facial expression and appalling Brooklyn accent. One of the world’s great mysteries: why did a reinvigorated Harvey Keitel, Reese Wetherspoon fresh from American Psycho and even post-Notting Hill Rhys Ifans stoop to this level? They must’ve of known that it was likely to be a crass, poorly-written attempt at getting all its laughs from cringeworthy sight gags and agonising one-liners and certainly not fom a well-structured, entertaining plot.
It's Got: A decent little cameo from Quentin Tarantino
It Needs: At least some funny jokes, to tone the whole thing down, a supersleuth to uncover the reasons of why the star names got onboard
DVD Extras A package only for fans - Adam Sandler Goes to Hell, a massive 21 deleted scenes and a music video DVD Extras Rating: 4/10
Summary
Harvery Keitel, Reese Wetherspoon and Rhys Ifans why, oh why, did you do it? An Adam Sandler effort that’s simply not funny.