Little Nicky

Like it or not, I am willing to concede Adam Sandler’s place in the comedy universe. His sniveling, smart-alecky, bullying persona endears him to teenage boys (and I suppose some girls) who view him as rebellion incarnate. I have never been a fan of his, and I have seen most of his movies in bits and pieces. That is enough, however, to recognize that they are not distinguished by complexity of thought or theme. Nevertheless, it would be churlish and ill sporting of me in the extreme to begrudge Sandler the glory for which he is so clearly ill suited. All of that having been said, we must recognize a fundamental truth: his movies don’t cost a lot of money, but they make a lot. You do the math. It would be easy to dismiss “Little Nicky” for its infantile wit, slack writing, puerile attempts at humor, insipid pandering to the teenage market, sexism, potty-mouth dialogue, shameless product placement, insubstantial gross out scenes, and cheerless brutality disguised as jokes. Many people will, and I don’t blame them.

But those are the easy criticisms, and I would be willing to endure all or most of them had Sandler and his co-workers showed even a little conviction in the making of this film. The real crime here is not that the movie was made (though that alone gives us pause for thought), but that they abandoned Sandler’s one effective comic persona, and eliminated the one element that can serve to make his movies watchable—their sense of subversion. In “Little Nicky” there is no sense of subversion. Rather than the bad boy, Sandler plays Nicky, the good son called upon to save his family. It is a theme better suited to “Little House on the Prairie” than a Sandler comedy. Nicky is the third son of Satan (played, in what must have been a moment of weakness—or debt--by Harvey Keitel). In the movie’s threadbare plot, Nicky’s older (and evil) brothers, Cassius and Adrian, become enraged when their father refuses to relinquish the throne of the Underworld. They escape from hell and decide to wreak havoc upon the good people of earth, an action which will lead to the death of their father. At this point, the sweet and simple-minded Nicky is sent by his father to bring his brothers back.

Nicky has to search the streets of Manhattan (where else?) hoping to stumble upon them, at which time he must somehow get them to drink from a magical flask that will trap them forever. Sandler, as most would agree, is an actor of no range whatsoever. His decision to play Nicky as a disfigured cretin with a speech impediment is one of the stranger acting choices in memory. Perhaps this is his idea of “stretching.” Naturally, like any boy visiting the big city for the first time, Nicky meets a girl, Valerie (played as a disheveled mess by the obviously gorgeous Patricia Arquette), gets run over by a bus (and a train, and a few other things), and has a gelato. He displays no talent, skill, or ability at any time, save when it serves the pipsqueak needs of the wafer-thin script. The jokes in the script are not only feeble but poorly executed to boot. They have no rhythm or build. The attempts at humor are thrown in slapdash, without much regard to how they fit in to—let alone advance—the plot. In other words, sketch comedy, but of the least inspired sort. For example, Nicky has one ally, a talking bulldog named Mr. Beefy.

But there is no context to the humor. Why a talking dog? Why Mr. Beefy? The whole movie plays like a Saturday Night Live skit (where, we should remember, young Sandler got his start) staying well past its welcome. The writers (and Sandler took a co-writing credit, which he should regret but probably doesn’t) seem to have at their disposal exactly three kinds of jokes: one, have people in your movie say “dude” a lot; two, have a group of people see something, scream, then run away; and lastly, bring in some second rate celebrities (Henry Winkler, the Harlem Globetrotters, Rodney Dangerfield) and do something ridiculous to or with them. That is a pretty thin portfolio to bring to a motion picture. “Little Nicky” departs from the Sandler formula of dirt-cheap pictures (although his own price tag has risen to the stratosphere) featuring crude humor. There are actually special effects and costumes present (albeit of a very second-rate caliber), and these cost money. Sandler had better watch out; if he continues this policy of budget escalation, his movies may require more of an investment than they can return, and nobody will want to make them anymore. Then we will be stuck with nothing but an aging Adam Sandler doing his old shtick, which is a notion far more dispiriting than anything we have seen so far. But what I think should really worry Sandler is the idea that his audience may abandon him. Teens are not necessarily stupid, and they are acutely sensitive to changing fashion. They can also sense when they are being sold a bill of goods. If Sandler and his cronies don’t freshen up their act, I think the kids, seeing right through it, will tell him, “Later.” Dude. (12/2/2000)