Film Review: Little Nicky (2000)

One of the most frustrating facts of life for US critics quarter of century ago was the immense popularity of Adam Sandler’s comedies, which made mockery of critical consensus about abysmal quality of said films. So, when Little Nicky, 2000 comedy directed by Steve Brill and starring Adam Sandler, actually failed at the box office it was a rare joyous occasion for critics who saw their way finally justified by general public.

In the film Sandler plays Nicky, son of Satan (played by Harvey Keitel), who has speech impediment. After Satan declares that continue to rule Hell for next 10,000 years, two of Nicky’s rebellious brothers – Cassius (played by Tom “Tiny” Lister) and Adrian (played by Rhys Yfans) – decide to overthrow their father. They escape to Earth, block entrance to Hell and make Satan, deprived of freshly arrived souls, to slowly fade away. Nicky decides to stop that and arrives to the streets of New York City where he would fight his brothers, receiving aid from number of bizarre helpers that include bulldog named Beefy (voiced by Don Smeigel). Despite all the difficulties in the new environments, Nicky still has time to start romance with design student Valerie Veran (played by Patricia Arquette). In the meantime, prankish activities of Cassius and Adrian begin to make New York City look exactly like Hell.

Like so many Sandler’s comedies, Little Nicky contains many scenes based around toilet humour and his approach to many characters is often misanthropic. The biggest problem for this film is that Sandler, who also co-wrote the script, make only number of gags actually work and that the film relies too much on special effects that ultimately bloated to budget to 80 million US$ and made financial fiasco all but inevitable. Cast that looks quite impressive on paper seems wasted, with exception of Harvey Keitel, who seems quite relaxed in the role of Satan. Allan Covert as Nicky’s confused New York room mate and Reese Witherspoon as Nicky’s mother in Heaven also give decent performances. Sandler and almost everyone else play characters that are mostly irritating and, apart from few brief lucid moments, like the one in which Ozzie Osbourne in cameo role comes to the rescue, Little Nicky (which had a number of Razzie nomination) looks a waste of time and one of those instances when the critics were quite right.

RATING: 3/10 (+)

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