Eight Crazy Nights

Adam Sandler's first (and to date, only) animated feature, "Eight Crazy Nights," takes a cue from his infamous "Chanukah Song" in celebrating the Jewish holiday -- as well as good old commercial Christmas -- musical style. With all the typical Sandler comedic hallmarks, it's certainly not a children's feature, but is admittedly a lot softer and more toned down than, say, "Happy Gilmore" or "Billy Madison."

The story revolves around the self-loathing loser, Davey, who is essentially a by-the-books "Happy Madison" character. Since his better days have passed him by, he spends most of his time being drunk and unhappy while simultaneously making everyone around him miserable. Because justice apparently takes a holiday, he is let off the hook for a drunken misdemeanor in turn for some community service. Davey must coach a youth league basketball team with the help of a bizarre little old man by the name of Whitey who has a disturbingly hairy body and who still lives with his sister. Slowly, Davey starts to redeem himself and even takes a stab at winning back the girl who got away from him.

Aside from being typical Adam Sandler fare, "Eight Crazy Nights" is rather vibrant in both its animation style and its musical numbers. It's simply a predictable, yet feel-good story that no doubt has worked its way into becoming somewhat of a holiday classic. Adam Sandler provides the voices of all three main characters, while the usual gaggle of co-horts in Jon Lovitz, Kevin Nealon, Rob Schneider and Allen Covert show up, too.

When it comes to comedies, Adam Sandler movies are in a niche of their very own. They're divisive critically, they tend to resort to the lowest common denominator, yet by the end of it they manage to get plenty of people to tune in, and they do respectably at the box office. Adam Sandler is no dummy, he managed to make bank with a lot of films, demonstrated his chops as a dramatic actor and thanks to his films not being put on a pedestal by a general public, he has managed to maintain a humble attitude that persists to this day.

Everyone has their favorite Adam Sandler film, whether it be those considered nostalgic or better with its tropes, and Eight Crazy Nights is one of my personal favorites. Yes it's absolutely crass, and for it to take place in a holiday film is bound to really irk people, but that just helps make it stand out from others. Whether you like it or not, you can't say Eight Crazy Nights didn't do something, well, relatively different.

The animation is an objective positive, not just because of it in a vacuum, but because it was made out of passion, commitment, essentially given those laid off from major 2D studios another shot to do what they do best.

As for the humor, as a lot of people complain about adult cartoons being ugly and having equally ugly humor, Eight Crazy Nights proves that foul humor is possible no matter how good the art, animation, etcetera.

Eight Crazy Nights has some benefit of coming out when Adam Sandler movies were at a respectable peak, before the schtick started to get old for a lot of people, it has a crazy way of sticking with you whether it be for better or worse. If you want a break from the more cutesy holiday flicks and you're not picky, see what Eight Crazy Nights can do for you.

It does sound weird when some movies get underrated. I don't know why people do that. Eight crazy nights is so heart felt and touching and yet so funny. The old guy character which was voiced by Rob schnieder was off the hook. I am not much of a animated fan, but tell you what; I watched the movie for that old guy who made the whole feature worth of watching and enjoyable.

At certain points of the movie, I felt i am gonna cry. When sandler opens the holiday card from his parents the first time after 20 years, that was quite a moment. I literally felt it. When the Old dwarf (sorry) couldn't get the prestigious patch award, i felt i am gonna cry. These are the moments that you cherish while watching a movie.

Although there are some parts that are not good for kids because of adult humor. However, its worth watching. Highly recommend to adults. Please watch it if you haven't. You'll not regret the fun.

My rating: doesn't matter. A good movie doesn't require any ratings to watch.

This is a wonderful film that should proudly be seated next to Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas.

Congrats to Sandler and his crew for bringing us an original (somewhat twisted) Holiday treat .... It's fresh to see a movie like this that breaks away from the (somewhat droll) regular Christmas Formula.

Sure, it may not exactly be great 'family' entertainment.... but it wont really harm any too many young fragile minds either. While there is a small amount of crude humor in this film... it doesnt cross the line and spoil any 'mythologies' of Christmas .... so young minds will not be tainted and lose their belief in Jolly Old Nick!

I've read lots of critisism about this film... and I was holding back until I saw it before I hit back at them. The fact is that there isnt much ground to criticize. It's Adam Sandler at his peak. It's a new art form for him and in the past year he has really spread his wings and taken off.

With this and Punch-Drunk Love under his belt, it's easy to say that it's been a good year for Sandler. If you want something different, original, colourful and fun to watch this Chrissy, then watch this little gem. Ignore all of the backlash and make up your own mind.

I rate this 8 out of 10.

Adam Sandler's animated tale has a thirty-three-year-old troublemaker (voiced by Sandler) wreaking havoc during the eight days of Hanukah. After getting in trouble with the law, he is given two choices: go to jail or perform community service, working as assistant referee for youth basketball league with the team's eccentric coach (also voiced by Sandler). He chooses the latter (whether he likes it or not) and goes out of his way to humiliate the coach at every chance he gets. Can the coach make this slacker change his ways?

Sandler caters to his fans with his crude, gross-out humor and excrement jokes. Some funny, and some plain stupid. Some of the songs are hilarious, including Sandler's revised Hanukah song. For those expecting a family-oriented holiday film can look elsewhere.

My evaluation: ** out of ****