Eight Crazy Nights Movie Review

Call me what you want, but I believe that films marketed as holiday entertainment should come from the It’s a Wonderful Life school of filmmaking where families are brought together for the holidays. Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights is so tasteless and so unfunny that it is a total disgrace to the holiday season. After sitting through this insulting movie, it only re-affirms my belief that Mr. Sandler is incapable of portraying or even voicing characters above a third grade mentality (and this includes the over-rated Punch-Drunk Love). Are we supposed to find this behavior amusing?

The animated Eight Crazy Nights takes place in a simpleton town called Dukesberry, where both Hanukkah and Christmas each get equal holiday treatment. The town is buzzing in holiday cheer until Davey (looks and sounds like Sandler), the 33-year old town drunk, crushes everyone’s fun by parading through the town passing gas at carolers, and knocking over snowmen. He’s arrested for his actions, but instead of getting jail time, he’s to redeem himself by assisting an aging youth-basketball league referee named Whitey (Sandler again, sounding too feminine) with his duties on the court.

Instead of helping Whitey teach kids lessons in teamwork, Davey is more interested in flipping off the parents, burping endlessly, and putting down select players on the basketball team. In fact, the mean-spirited Davey tells one overweight boy he needs a bra to enclose his breasts! Whitey hopes that by allowing the delinquent Davey to move into the house he shares with his sister Eleanore (Sandler’s best voice here), he can turn around Davey’s attitude and win the All-Star award, a patch, for the most liked person in the town.

Unfortunately, the majority of what we’re given in Eight Crazy Nights doesn’t complement the spirit of the season, but rather makes our turkey-filled stomachs churn. There is nothing redeeming about this film, which features children who use profanity, talking deer that eat their own feces, and a three-breasted woman who feeds her kids three at a time. I could go on forever with further examples of this film’s tastelessness. If these are the kinds of thoughts running through Sandler’s sick and twisted mind, then he certainly has no place putting them in the movies marketed to children and their families.

Fortunately for those without the third grade mentality, Eight Crazy Nights breezes through at just 75-minutes – the film’s only saving grace. I did find the interaction between Whitey and Eleanore amusing, but the film’s absurdity drags that down and the few other remotely funny parts. Eight Crazy Nights is not appropriate for children or adults, and it leaves a far worse taste in your mouth than that old holiday fruitcake in your freezer.

Whoa... now who deemed this appropriate for a DVD release at all, much less a two-disc set? Sandler fans -- and you gotta be a serious fan -- will presumably enjoy the "cast and technical commentaries" (technical commentary!), videos, deleted scenes, and -- get this -- nine original featurettes about the making of the film. And here we thought Sandler just pulled this one out of his basement one weekend.

Aka 8 Crazy Nights.

It's Christmas in heaven.