Adam Sandler's 8 Crazy Nights

This article was published on 12.05.02.

Adam Sandler’s Meatball Animation studio has produced a feature that is just as crude, rude and self-important as the former Saturday Night Live star’s live-action movies. I guess this is good news if you are a Sandler fan, but non-fans such as me (although the sweetly comic The Wedding Singer is an exception) may feel not only like they’ve found a cinematic lump of coal in this stocking but also like they’ve been beaten with it. Davey Stone (drawn in the likeness of Sandler himself) is a troubled Jewish man who has hated the world, the yule season and especially himself ever since his folks died in a December car wreck. After running afoul of the law, Davey is sentenced to referee youth basketball games under the supervision of an elf-like geezer with a grating voice (the voice of Sandler again). The story begins with a drunken Davey erupting with a humongous wet belch and dry-humping the trunk of his car, and the movie pretty much goes downhill from there, as the belligerent fool attracts the attention of a pretty girl and learns how to be a nice person once again.