1/5 Parents - Don't Let Your Kids Watch This Movie
  by DKelley (St. Louis, Missouri)
Someone I know bought this in a discount rack, thinking it was what it pretends to be -- a children's holiday cartoon. Nothing could be further from the truth. I could not believe what a disgusting piece of filth it is, full of perverted sexual innuendo. Movies like this should not be marketed toward children, and no matter what the rating, that is who they were trying to target by making it look like a children's holiday cartoon. It should be kept in the back room of video stores with the restriction that only adults could see it (and then only if they have absolutely no taste nor moral fortitude whatsoever). I can't give this as strongly negative a review as it deserves! I only gave it one star because they wouldn't let me give it none.

1/5 The thrid in a string of flops for Sandler
  by Derrick Dunn (Woodbridge,VA)
Eight Crazy Nights is the thrid back to back unfunny movie(following Little Nicky and Mr Deeds) that Adam Sandler has made in the past two years. Eight Crazy Nights is full of toiler humor and unfunny one-liners. I may have laughed once or twice if these movie. They should have called Eight Crazy Ways to ruin a comic's carrer.

3/5 SANDLER'S CHRISTMAS EXPRESS
  by Mark Turner

I have been a fan of the movies Adam Sandler has made to date. Are they cinematic treasures? Heck no! They're nothing more than fun comedies that make me laugh. And with that in mind, I expected nothing less from this movie, even if it is the animated adventures of a Sandler character.

What I got instead was a mish mash of several movie styles that never quite gels. Sure, it made me feel good by films end but I think that has more to do with my feelings towards sappy movies during the holidays than the movie itself (see review of ELF).

The story revolves around Davey (Sandler) who is the town jerk. Having had the chance to make something of his life, he tossed it all aside one fateful night when his parents died on the way to watch him play in a junior league basketball game. Now the town drunk, a run in with the law is about to land him in jail. Until a kindly, tiny voice speaks up.

Whitey (again Sandler) is the town do-gooder. He has worked forever at the town recreation center with kids playing there since the days when Davey was learning his first jump shot. Whitey sees something in Davey that no one else does and takes a chance on him. He has him turned over to his custody and has him help at the center.

But years of bitterness have left Davey hollow inside. He has no use for anyone. He treats everyone with disdain. He even goes so far as to admit that he hates himself. It isn't until he meets Jennifer, the girl of his dreams long ago, again and her son that he begins to even consider coming around.

But as fate would have it, things continue to go from bad to worse until Davey makes the decision to leave town behind and make a run for it. On the night when Whitey hopes to earn the towns respect for the years he has given by receiving an award called the spirit patch, Davey hits the road knowing full well that it won't happen. While Whitey may give more to the town than the people realize, he is one of those faceless people that does it all and receives no praise. And if Davey leaves, it becomes just one more major disappointment in Whitey's life.

Unless a Christmas miracle could take place.

Now, while the plot of this movie seems quite simple that's because...well...it is. Surrounding the story of Davey and Whitey are the small tales of the rest of the townsfolk. The adventures and predicaments that the pair gets involved in as well as musical numbers fill it out as well. And what would a Sandler film be without tons of crude humor? If toilet humor (and in some cases here I mean that literally) offends or disgust you then this movie is not your cup of tea.

While I enjoyed the comedy here as well as the animation and story beneath it all, I found that there was too much mean spirit running throughout for me to embrace it. The joy of the film does not come about until the final moments of the film, long after we have been bombarded with the cruelty over and over again. The ending does raise that warm fuzzy feeling inside but at what cost to get there?

This is one movie that will have a hard time finding an audience. Most people over 12 aren't that interested in animated films. And those over 30 will not find the gross out humor all that great. But there are a few of us twisted people out there who will enjoy this one even if not making it a regular Christmas treat. Watching it once may be enough. But it is definitely for selective tastes.


2/5 You'd be better off getting another drediel....
  by Dane R. Youssef (Alameda, CA)
by Dane Youssef


OK, folks. Now here is a movie that will put you out of the Haunakah spirit as quickly as Ron Howard's live-action remake of "The Grinch" put people out of the Christmas spirit.

A nasty piece too goofy to even be animated, it's Adam Sandler's first full-fledged animated musical "8 Crazy Nights."

Every year, just about every TV show grinds out a puke-worthy Christmas special where the formula is something like this: Characters have spirit, something bad happens everyone has misfortune. Then... the split-second everyone suddenly obtains the holiday spirit... everyone's problems instantly evaporate. And everything everybody wants... suddenly fall into place...

Apparently, because there's little hype and buzz around Haunakah, Sandler has decided to put some product out there (just like he did with his infamous SNL song "The Hanuakah Song"), but basically with this movie, all he's done is proved that there can be trite, tedious and tiresome holiday "specials" for Hanuakah, too.
Is that a fight WORTH winning?

I've enjoyed a lot of Adam Sandler's flicks, but this one had me annoyed, bored, disgusted and reaching for the remote after the first quarter.

Sandler's obnoxious hateful slacker shtick has finally been beaten into the ground. He's been pushing this since he started making movies. His worst, by far, was "Little Nicky," but this movie is the equivalent of a reindeer turd.

Adam Sandler stars (or rather, voices) as Davey, a delinquent who's gone downhill a life of crime and vandalism ever since early in his youth. He lives in a crummy trailer and is the Scrooge/Grinch of this little upstate town. He does his best at making plenty of enemies and getting on people's "*****" lists instead of Santa's good one. Alcohol and sleeping in don't help his personality much.

Finally, after the town has had enough of his very presence (in my opinion, it took way too long), he gets caught during one of his vandalism through town and is thrown before a judge.

Things look bad for Davey. But just then, when the judge is about to toss him in a State prison, the town's elderly volunteer youth-basketball coach (also voiced by Sandler) steps up and requests the idea of taking Davey under his wing and making him his assistant coach. Davey rudely rolls his eyes at this idea, but realizing it's either this or a decade in the slammer, he quickly signs up.

OK, now see if any of this sounds familiar:

Whitey's dream for the last 35 years has been to win the town highest honor--the annual town patch. Something they give to the town's most respected and beloved citizen.

Davey doesn't think he'll ever make it. There's also a woman who Davey dated as a young preteen who has grown to despise who he is now. She has a kid who seems insecure and shy and needs a good father figure in his life. Davey hits bottom and realizes that...

Well, you can put the rest together, can't you?

But there's no fun along the way.

I felt while watching this---a sense of disappointment and disinterest in everything that was going on. I felt like I should be enjoying this movie a lot more than I was. I could identify with this story. I used to be an excited and open-minded child. But my optimism and eager nature was met with a lot of crushing disappointment when I was little.

Oh, his voice-over is strong enough. As Davey (his usual movie character), Whitey and Eleanor. And SNL/Sandler-movie regulars Jon Lovitz, Kevin Nealson and Rob Schnider make their trademark noteworthy points, but it's basically top-notch comedic actors out there reading the phone book.

Davey is supposed to be a hero. At least that's how we're supposed to see him. As an angry kid who's lost touch with himself and attacks everyone who can find happiness--in places he can't. Bitter, angry, hateful and destructive---but underneath, there's a repressed likable guy trying to get out (In case you've ever seen an Adam Sandler movie, I'm not giving anything away).

But me, I saw him as someone I'd run into oncoming traffic to avoid. Even when he goes though his "change of heart," he was still someone I would take a baseball bat to. Davey is the prototypical bully in almost every Hollywood movie. Here, he's supposed to be a hero.

I guess that could work... if Davey wasn't constructed out of cardboard and as funny as the death of your family pet.

As the town bully, he's a dick. As a reformed hero, he's a phony. For some reason, when Davey reformed, I didn't believe it for an instant. He's still an open crusty sore. Sandler is just pulling out the standard cope-out ending.

But he's made a movie that's too profane and nasty for his ideal audience and too simple-minded, scatological and unimaginative for older viewers.

The jokes are mostly just Sandler committing acts of destruction and violent behavior (either physical or emotional). There are some nice songs here and there (some mediocre though), but this movie is no holiday pick-me-up. If you walk into this movie in a seasonal mood, this will certainly take care of that.

What's really unsettling is the artificial reform ending that I think these movies are required to have.

Sandler's remix of "The Haunakah Song" was some of the best part of the movie (and so were a couple of his others). Like I said, there are a handful of funny jokes and catchy songs, but the bad far more than outnumbers the good.

I hope Sandler chooses to evolve his style... at least a little.

Was he ALWAYS like this? Is this just more of the same?

Or am I just out-growing him?


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5/5 Adam Sandler is Awesome
  by Rana Snider (Eureka, CA USA)
This movie is great, but having it on 2 disc special edition maked it even better. The special features are the shiznit.