Movie Reviews

Little Nicky

26 Dec 2000

In "Little Nicky", we are supposed to believe Adam Sandler as a child of the devil. It isn't difficult. In fact, I've had my suspicions ever since "Billy Madison". Strangely, despite his ancestry, Nicky is Sandler's most innocuous character so far. He is the devil's sweetest and most innocent son; his mother is an angel. He even has a speech impediment and an awkward walking style that Sandler obviously took great pains to depict.

This story (co-written by Sandler, Tim Herlihy and director Steven Brill) sees his vicious elder brothers, Adrian (Rhys Ifans) and Cassius (Tom Lister, Jr.) escape Hell to wreak havoc on Earth. New York, to be exact, which shouldn't be necessary. Anyway, while they are over there, inspiring sodomy and all-round sinfulness, their escape has frozen the gates of Hell, causing the devil (Harvey Keitel) to gradually fall apart. Nicky, despite his ignorance of Earth, has to find them before their father ceases to exist.

We'd be crazy to expect either subtlety or good taste from an Adam Sandler movie, especially one that revolves around the topics of sin and eternal damnation. In many places, "Little Nicky" is also laboured and corny. However, elsewhere I had a strange experience: I was actually enjoying an Adam Sandler movie.

That's a major admission, coming from someone who couldn't even sit through "The Wedding Singer" on video (despite having someone next to me to rewind and explain all the hysterically funny bits). It's a bit like watching the dressage at the Olympics, and being unwittingly drawn into the action. Except I wasn't caught up in the Olympic spirit. This movie, for all its flaws, is not as bad as it should be.

If you are hoping for something truly immoral, however, you will be disappointed. Keitel, who could easily have played the devil as a sleazy crook, instead portrays him (as per the script) as a loving father and generally nice guy, more interested in balancing the cosmos than in being the lord of evil. This allows Ifans, in a nicely contemptible performance, to truly shine as the villain. It also makes it terribly predictable. Like all of Sandler's films, this is soft-centred candy, disguised as something with more bite.