Adam Sandler's style of comedy has always been somewhat of an acquired taste. Some people think he's a genius, while others have never understood what all the fuss is about. But even those who think he's hilarious might start to have their doubts after seeing Little Nicky, a mediocre comedy that is short on laughs.
One of this movie's most glaring flaws is that it gets stuck in a rut by a plot intended to be a driving force for jokes but that ends up stealing attention away from the comedy. All of Sandler's starring vehicles so far (Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy) have been about an immature loser who has to face up to responsibility and manages to find love along the way. Little Nicky is no different, but its twist is that the immature loser Sandler plays this time is the son of Satan.
When Nicky's two brothers abandon the netherworld to wreak havoc on Earth, it causes the gates of hell to freeze over. Without new souls, Satan begins to decompose, so Nicky must go to Earth, find his brothers and bring them back so his dad's life will be saved. But in the process of furthering this plotline, a lot of the jokes get lost along the way. As more and more screen time is given to resolving the story, the script gets less and less funny. This problem is especially troublesome when the plot is as predictable as Little Nicky's is. We know that Nicky will end up saving the day, so why waste time building up the tension of the story by throwing in twists and false endings when what the audience really came for is the jokes?
Another problem area of the plot lies in the human woman Nicky falls in love with, played by Patricia Arquette. Arquette does a decent job in the part, so she is not to blame for it going awry. The real question is why a love interest is necessary at all in a movie about the son of Satan. The "falling in love" aspect of the plot again took quite a bit away from the actual comedy, since a lot of time had to be given on-screen to their developing relationship. But romance is not why audiences go to see Adam Sandler movies; jokes are. The inclusion of this part of the plot serves only to fill up time, time that could have been better spent making the audience laugh.
But perhaps Sandler realized in the making of this film that the laughs were going to be few and far between anyway, so he better try to divert the audience in other ways. Most of the jokes devoted to Nicky being the spawn of Lucifer are really lame and have been done before, such as the Exorcist joke about Nicky's head spinning around. Other jokes are completely inane and rely upon the type of crude humor that Hollywood has come to depend upon as its bread and butter. At one point a demon is punished for ineptitude by having breasts grow out the top of his head, a joke that, while slightly funny at first, gets beat into the ground by the end of the film.
Sandler traps himself in a character in this film that doesn't allow him to flex his comedic muscles. Nicky's bent form and raspy voice must be maintained throughout the film, and it ends up getting more on the audience's nerves than making us laugh. Most of the really funny parts in this movie come not from the lead but from the supporting cast, as well as cameo appearances from characters in Sandler's other films.
But these few chuckles are really sort of rare. For the most part the predictable plot of Little Nicky gets more attention than the laughs, leaving this comedy searching for its true purpose. The big Adam Sandler fans have been waiting to see this movie since they first heard of it months ago and have probably already seen it by now, so there's nothing I can do in this review to sway them. But those of you out there who haven't seen it yet can still be spared; Little Nicky is not funny enough to deserve your business.
