What if “It’s a Wonderful Life” was directed by a mental patient with severe brain damage? What if it was written by a sociopath? This is the questions asked during the viewing of a potentially annoying and incredible unnecessary film called “Eight Crazy Nights”, a film supposedly created as a Holiday Chanukah film yet barely even covers the topic of Chanukah, the meaning of the word, or the holiday. Adam Sandler is disappointing; here is a guy who has so much money and resources yet piddles it away on these irrelevant and crude films that try so hard to be funny but end up causing people to roll their eyes so much it gives them a migraine.
What becomes a pain is that there is potential for this film to become a sentimental sweet cartoon but just when it’s about to reach that level, writers Brooks Arthur, Allen Covert, Brad Isaacs, and Sandler himself pisses it away on crude violence or humor (I’m mentioning their names on this review, because if there’s a slight chance that a Hollywood exec is reading this review, they’ll know not to hire them). There’s a formula Adam Sandler follows in every one of his movies that easily gets old: young guy forced into a situation beyond his control, taught to feel something or come to grips beneath odd characters, violence, and lots of crude humor and gore.
It’s annoying how terrible this film is that I don’t know why I even wasted my time attempting to even fathom the story. The characters are no better in this mean-spirited farce with personalities ranging from the blatant attempts at gross out humor to the characters that make you furrow a brow. Sandler voices the character Whitey, and Eleanor, Whitey’s sister. These are two characters that are interesting, but become the frequent butt of jokes and violence throughout the story. Aside from their obvious mis-use there is also a structure of supporting characters that have no contribution to the story. There’s a stereotypical running gag with a Chinese Waiter (voice of Rob Schneider).
Sandler turns the film into a near despicable vanity project focusing solely on his character with no other developments or subplots. Also, this becomes a blatant hour long corporate commercial for various products; there’s even an entire musical number mentioning those products, and a sequence where Sandler hallucinates as the products come to life. It not only degrades the story but insults the audience who are being treated to an hour long commercial dressed as a movie. There are a lot of unnecessary elements to the story including a lot of feces jokes.
The film never manages to redeem itself from a mean-spirited tale nor does it look like it tries, instead there’s a lot of cruel and crude gags and obvious sight jokes that become so ridiculous and appalling underscored by a basically fraudulent attempt at a holiday film that simply becomes a vanity-ridden self-promotional waste of film and money for Adam Sandler. There’s a hint as to the character Davey is so sour involving his parents but that’s rarely ever touched upon nor is it resolved. Everything during the film seems so tacked on as if Sandler has no intention of attempting to be original. A nearly unwatchable waste of time, “Eight Crazy Nights” is by no means a movie seeking out, unless you’re of the warped mindset.