Dud Planet
In his latest film, Little Nicky, Adam Sandler plays
the son of Satan. Nicky, odd as it seems, is
remarkably true to the popular image Sandler has
cultivated in his previous films. In some instances,
Sandler plays a kind of angel: the goofy yet loveable
buffoon who sings his heart out for Drew Barrymore in
The Wedding Singer or the kind-hearted tollbooth
operator who takes care of an abandoned child in Big Daddy. In others, he plays a devilish sort: the surly
aspiring hockey player who beats up venerable game
show host Bob Barker in Happy Gilmore or the trust
fund flunkie who drunkenly hallucinates giant penguins
and fixates on co-star Bridgette Wilson's breasts in
Billy Madison.
In Little Nicky, however, these two sides collide as
the film tries to create a sympathetic, romantic hero
whose demonic side has him engaging in crude behavior
and juvenile comedy. As a result, Sandler's angelic
and devilish halves effectually cancel each other out.
As Nicky, Sandler is the youngest of the devil's three
sons. His two older half-brothers, Adrian and Cassius
(Rhys Ifans and Tony "Tiny" Lister, Jr.), repeatedly
chastise the socially maladjusted, sensitive Nicky.
When Satan (Harvey Keitel) decides to extend his rule
in Hell for an additional ten thousand years rather
than will his throne to any of his sons, the impatient
Adrian and Cassius decide to make their own Hell — up
on Earth. Their escape from the original Inferno
disrupts the influx of souls into Hell and, as a
result, dear old Dad begins to fall apart —
literally. Nicky, of course, is the only one who can
return his brothers to Hell, an event which will in
turn piece his father back together. It's up to Nicky,
in other words, to set things right.
Nicky's adventures on earth alternate between
gross-out comedy and hackneyed romance — neither
storyline works. The ostensible comedy is derived in
good part from Nicky's guide on earth, Mr. Beefy, a
streetwise bulldog who helps him acclimate to his new
human form and earthly surroundings. Mr. Beefy is
given a voice through the use of animated lips, like
those used for the title character in Babe and then
on every species in the ark in commercials for
everything from ice cream to kitty litter. As the
failure of Babe's sequel, Babe: Pig in the City,
suggests, however, these lips on animals are no longer
an entertaining gimmick. Still, Mr. Beefy spews out
wisecracks through his computer-generated mouth as if
the effect makes what he's saying somehow funny or
interesting. The bulldog regales the audience with
flashbacks of his experiences with strip clubs and
binge drinking, pausing often to cock his leg and
urinate (with the help of more computer animation).
Mr. Beefy's toilet humor, however, is stale and tame
(a peeing dog just isn't that funny), as is the rest
of Little Nicky's comedy.
Joining the bulldog to help Nicky are his effeminate
but (so he insists) heterosexual roommate (Allen
Covert), who cheerfully lends his support after
Nicky's evil roaring as he snores gives away his
secret identity, and two heavy metal stoners (Peter
Dante and Jonathan Loughram), who worship our hero
after they discover him breathing fire in Central
Park. The gags that result when this group of guys
gets together bear Sandler's trademark juvenile male
humor. This basically means jokes about breasts,
excrement, and midgets (this last a disturbing and
increasingly popular punchline — see Blink 182's
latest video "Man Overboard" and MTV's Jackass). In
keeping with this theme, Satan affixes a pair of
breasts onto one unfortunate demon's (Kevin Nealon)
head and heaven turns out to be a sorority house full
of luscious babes. All this weak and recycled comedy
turns Little Nicky into a watered-down version of
Sandler's testosterone-charged Billy Madison and
Happy Gilmore.
Sandler's angelic image is evoked in Nicky's romance
with the disheveled and painfully shy fashion school
student Valerie (Patricia Arquette). Taking a break
from the company of Mr. Beefy and the metalheads,
Nicky falls in love with the bespectacled misfit and
tries awkwardly to win her affections with such
heart-melting one-liners as, "Your eyes are big and
sparkly. I like looking at them." This part of the
plot attempts to capitalize on Sandler's roles in
romantic comedies like The Wedding Singer and Big Daddy, but with little success. Nicky's mush-mouthed
speech impediment makes him a loser, period, more
annoying than sympathetic. Though the blame for his
social ineptitude is ascribed to his brothers' many
physical abuses, Nicky's simpering speech and geeky
haircut do little to inspire romance.
In the midst of this lack of originality and
inspiration, the movie resorts to calling up Sandler's
past successes in film and television. Many of his
Saturday Night Live cohorts appear in cameo roles,
including Jon Lovitz, Dana Carvey, and Ellen
Cleghorne. Rob Schneider appears as well, reprising
his role as the foulmouthed Cajun in The Waterboy.
The popularity of SNL and The Waterboy, however,
is not enough to rescue Little Nicky from its
disastrous smash-up between Adam Sandler, the romantic
hero, and Adam Sandler, the slapstick comic. In the
end, neither Sandler's angel nor his devil emerges
unscathed from the muddled wreck of this film. And so
the audience is left in limbo, a ninety-minute
cinematic purgatory that feels like an eternity.
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