Little Nicky «««
PG-13, 90m. 2000
Cast & Credits: Adam Sandler (Little Nicky), Patricia Arquette (Valerie), Harvey Keitel (Satan), Tommy “Tiny” Lister, Jr. (Cassius), Rhys Ifans (Adrian). Screenplay by Tim Herlihy, Adam Sandler and Steven Brill. Directed by Steven Brill.
I swore I would never see a movie with Adam Sandler, which was a promise I most definitely intended to keep. Not that I don’t think Sandler isn’t talented. I just can’t stand the voices he plays. I compare it to listening to a cat scratch their claws on a blackboard. I cringe every time I hear it.
Why can’t Sandler for once play himself? Why is it every time he does another comedy, he has to take on a completely different persona that truly makes one wonder if the devil really is in possession of his soul?
Yet I still get lambasted by Sandler fans who flash threatening looks of utter displeasure back in my face when I tell them I haven’t seen The Wedding Singer (1998) with Drew Barrymore. I have been told the film is a date movie that is like a throwback to the kinds of teenage movies producer/director John Hughes made back in the 1980s. Or Happy Gilmore (1996) that has Sandler playing golf against The Price Is Right’s game show host, Bob Barker.
The closest I came to seeing an Adam Sandler film was 1997’s The Waterboy. No it wasn’t because I wanted to see Sandler again talking in yet another annoying dialect. Watching the previews, I knew that Kathy Bates (Misery - 1990) would steal the show playing Sandler’s over protective mother.
I finally caved when the actor’s latest comedy, Little Nicky, came out last November. The reason was the rating Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert awarded it; two and a half stars out of four. This was Ebert’s highest rating for an Adam Sandler movie to date (all the other films the former Saturday Night Live star has been in prior to Little Nicky, he gave a star).
To my surprise, I wound up enjoying Little Nicky more than I expected. My only regret was that I didn’t first see it upon release. As the inept, misbegotten son of Satan (Harvey Keitel in what is perhaps the best casting as the Devil since Robert De Niro played the Prince of Darkness in Angel Heart – 1987), Sandler this time has found a role that’s perfect for the kind of dialect he likes to use.
After looking at Nicky and his other two jealous sons, Cassius (Tommy "Tiny" Lister Jr.) and Adrian (Rhys Ifans), Satan decides that Hell would be better off if he continued to rule the next 10,000 years.
This doesn’t sit well with Adrian and Cassius who were expecting to be the rightful heirs to the throne. As a result, the two jump through the fires of Hell to raise their own chaos in New York. You just know something is not right when the Harlem Globetrotters commit technical fouls and Live talk show host, Regis Philbin, boasts on his morning show how he smashed up some guy’s vehicle with a baseball bat on his way to work.
Things aren’t any better in Hell. Fires begin freezing over literally keeping any new souls from entering while Satan starts losing his body parts. All hope is relied on Little Nicky to bring his two brothers back to Hell before his father is nothing more than just a pair of talking lips with two hands.
For a guy who walks like the hunchback from Notre Dame and speaks in such a low quiet tone that seems to exhibit a shy personality, how is it that Nicky manages to vulgarly insult the first good looking woman (Patricia Arquette) he sees while in the Big Apple?
"The devil made me do it," he tells her.
Little Nicky is filled with humorous cameo appearances that include director Quentin Tarantino as a blind street preacher and Reese Whitherspoon (Pleasantville - 1998) as Nicky’s mother who is an angel from Heaven and is the age of a high school cheerleader. The best is from Rodney Dangerfield as the grandfather of Hades.
"Even in Hell I get no respect," he says.
As I said earlier, the one regret I have is I didn’t see Little Nicky until it came to the dollar theater which made for one of the worst movie going experiences I have had in a long time. I slapped down $2.50 for a small coke and got a watered down Dr. Pepper instead. The seats were so close to the ground, I felt like I was being pulled down by gravity. I could hear candy wrappers on the ground move on their own which led me to believe there were either rats or roaches running around.
Last but not least, there were projection problems with the film that never got corrected. I got so aggravated I walked out before the picture was over.
Although I didn’t get to see how Little Nicky ended, I was entertained enough by what I did see to award the first Adam Sandler movie I have seen with a three star rating.
©4/10/01
PG-13, 90m. 2000
Cast & Credits: Adam Sandler (Little Nicky), Patricia Arquette (Valerie), Harvey Keitel (Satan), Tommy “Tiny” Lister, Jr. (Cassius), Rhys Ifans (Adrian). Screenplay by Tim Herlihy, Adam Sandler and Steven Brill. Directed by Steven Brill.
Why can’t Sandler for once play himself? Why is it every time he does another comedy, he has to take on a completely different persona that truly makes one wonder if the devil really is in possession of his soul?
Yet I still get lambasted by Sandler fans who flash threatening looks of utter displeasure back in my face when I tell them I haven’t seen The Wedding Singer (1998) with Drew Barrymore. I have been told the film is a date movie that is like a throwback to the kinds of teenage movies producer/director John Hughes made back in the 1980s. Or Happy Gilmore (1996) that has Sandler playing golf against The Price Is Right’s game show host, Bob Barker.
The closest I came to seeing an Adam Sandler film was 1997’s The Waterboy. No it wasn’t because I wanted to see Sandler again talking in yet another annoying dialect. Watching the previews, I knew that Kathy Bates (Misery - 1990) would steal the show playing Sandler’s over protective mother.
I finally caved when the actor’s latest comedy, Little Nicky, came out last November. The reason was the rating Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert awarded it; two and a half stars out of four. This was Ebert’s highest rating for an Adam Sandler movie to date (all the other films the former Saturday Night Live star has been in prior to Little Nicky, he gave a star).
To my surprise, I wound up enjoying Little Nicky more than I expected. My only regret was that I didn’t first see it upon release. As the inept, misbegotten son of Satan (Harvey Keitel in what is perhaps the best casting as the Devil since Robert De Niro played the Prince of Darkness in Angel Heart – 1987), Sandler this time has found a role that’s perfect for the kind of dialect he likes to use.
After looking at Nicky and his other two jealous sons, Cassius (Tommy "Tiny" Lister Jr.) and Adrian (Rhys Ifans), Satan decides that Hell would be better off if he continued to rule the next 10,000 years.
This doesn’t sit well with Adrian and Cassius who were expecting to be the rightful heirs to the throne. As a result, the two jump through the fires of Hell to raise their own chaos in New York. You just know something is not right when the Harlem Globetrotters commit technical fouls and Live talk show host, Regis Philbin, boasts on his morning show how he smashed up some guy’s vehicle with a baseball bat on his way to work.
Things aren’t any better in Hell. Fires begin freezing over literally keeping any new souls from entering while Satan starts losing his body parts. All hope is relied on Little Nicky to bring his two brothers back to Hell before his father is nothing more than just a pair of talking lips with two hands.
For a guy who walks like the hunchback from Notre Dame and speaks in such a low quiet tone that seems to exhibit a shy personality, how is it that Nicky manages to vulgarly insult the first good looking woman (Patricia Arquette) he sees while in the Big Apple?
"The devil made me do it," he tells her.
Little Nicky is filled with humorous cameo appearances that include director Quentin Tarantino as a blind street preacher and Reese Whitherspoon (Pleasantville - 1998) as Nicky’s mother who is an angel from Heaven and is the age of a high school cheerleader. The best is from Rodney Dangerfield as the grandfather of Hades.
"Even in Hell I get no respect," he says.
As I said earlier, the one regret I have is I didn’t see Little Nicky until it came to the dollar theater which made for one of the worst movie going experiences I have had in a long time. I slapped down $2.50 for a small coke and got a watered down Dr. Pepper instead. The seats were so close to the ground, I felt like I was being pulled down by gravity. I could hear candy wrappers on the ground move on their own which led me to believe there were either rats or roaches running around.
Last but not least, there were projection problems with the film that never got corrected. I got so aggravated I walked out before the picture was over.
Although I didn’t get to see how Little Nicky ended, I was entertained enough by what I did see to award the first Adam Sandler movie I have seen with a three star rating.
©4/10/01
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