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.

Funny as all heck. Decent story music was alright. Animation holds up for its age. Added to my families Christmas movie rotation.

Adam Sandler shows a great range and his characters. The story is fairly compelling. Whitey makes the story without him. The story goes nowhere.

It is a touching Christmas story. It really is about Whitey and how he impacts the people and his hometown.

The way whitey believes in his town the people in it. It's when Adam Sandler's character stands up for Whitey that you really see the true story of Christmas. Come alive in this.

The story brings the story of Hanukkah and redemption with through Christmas into a new light.

It's Adam Sandler, so you get what you expect. Very crude humour (especially toilet humour) and a ludicrous plot. I laughed a lot and that's what matters to me.

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 ****

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.