***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Adam Sandler, Patricia Arquette, Harvey Keitel, Rhys Ifans
screenplay by Tim Herlihy & Adam Sandler & Steven Brill
directed by Steven Brill
PLEASE NOTE: Little Nicky is unofficially the first title in New Line’s Infinifilm DVD line; we have not reviewed the Infinifilm-specific features of this disc.
by Bill Chambers Here’s a movie in which Heaven is ingeniously conceived as the inside of a birthday cake, and critics everywhere defaulted to the post-chic anti-Adam Sandler stance. And audiences proved unusually compliant with the faultfinders, given Sandler’s vast fanbase, flocking instead to Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, whose proprietary endorsement is likely the result of funnelling millions in hush money directly into The Widow Geisel’s pocket. I’d be a hypocrite indeed if I didn’t disclose that I, too, turned the other cheek on Little Nicky when it opened in multiplexes last November, thus ignoring the holiday excursion with its own imagination, handsome cinematography (courtesy of Theo Van De Sande), palpable warmth, and a funny, estimable ensemble, led by Sandler as the titular son of Satan.
Sent topside to the Big Apple to track down his scheming, malevolent half-brothers (Rhys Ifans and Tommy “Tiny” Lister, Jr.) before their father (Harvey Keitel!) falls to literal pieces, Nicky savours his transient New Yorker status. He moves in with a struggling Broadway actor (the chameleonic Allen Covert), gorges on Popeye’s chicken, and endures repeated macings from design student Valerie (Patricia Arquette) because she gives him “the butterflies.” Little Nicky tells a rather familiar fish-out-of-water story, yet Sandler is in uncharted territory here with the fantastical elements, and the jokes, steeped in pop minutiae (perhaps, to the film’s detriment, almost to the point of elitism), are frequently witty. I will concede that the Robert Smigel-voiced bulldog, Beefy, fast expends our charity.
It appears as though the hostility that sometimes informs Sandler’s on-screen persona has been volleyed into Nicky’s severe facial contortions and scratchy throat, which might be something like psychic substitution or pain deferment for the erstwhile Billy Madison, since his nicest characters tend to deviate the most from what he looks and sounds like naturally. (Interestingly, the opposite holds true for Jim Carrey.) That the general public shunned Sandler’s harmless-dork portrayal of a demon is probably a comment on both the comic’s stardom and the fire-and-brimstone genre, but I ask you: what is comedy if not the reversal of expectations?
Or maybe the Judeo-Christian afterlife is the last sacred subject left in America. (In my final year of high school, I played a sarcastic, cigar-chomping Satan in a video for English class, and a classmate said I had assaulted (not just insulted) his belief system.) Certainly, Little Nicky risks offense by conceptually purifying Hades as the place where bad souls land, where Old Gooseberry must be inherently good if he regularly takes time out of his busy schedule to shove a pineapple up Hitler’s ass–that is, if he exists to punish wicked deeds, not just compete with God for souls like a scout for the majors. This helps the film’s logic along (Nicky’s angelic mother (Reese Witherspoon, in a hilarious cameo) met Nicky’s father at a “Heaven and Hell mixer”), but logic and religion don’t always go hand in hand.
THE DVD
For the first time in the format’s history, Adam Sandler recorded a DVD commentary. Joined on New Line’s Platinum Series Little Nicky by co-writer Tim Herlihy and co-writer/director Steven Brill, he sounds nervous describing anything other than what’s happening on screen. A darn shame, but a second track, hosted by Michael McKean (“Chief of Police” in Little Nicky, though This is Spinal Tap fans will know him as David St. Hubbins), offsets any disappointment. The Little Nicky disc is something else thanks to McKean’s propensity for asking (screen-specific, amazingly) questions of his rotating panel (Jon Lovitz, Blake Clark, Peter Dante, Clint Howard, Rhys Ifans, and Kevin Nealon, among others) that alternately provoke laughter and squirmy embarrassment, not to mention the sheer number of his guests (10 in all). Another record could very well be set by the deleted scenes section, which consists of 22 outtakes/extensions, all in 16×9-enhanced widescreen. I haven’t much to say on these except, for the sake of structural symmetry, I wish they’d gone with the original ending.
In the half-hour-long “Adam Sandler Goes to Hell”, a reasonably good making-of, we hear from the effects team, Arquette, and others who didn’t really get a say in either of the commentaries. Another doc, “Satan’s Top Forty”, constitutes a 17-minute history of hair metal from musicians and scholars alike. To that end, the DVD also features P.O.D.‘s video for “School of Hard Knocks.” Cast & crew filmographies, the theatrical trailer, DVD-ROM content (script and website access, screen savers, and more), and kooky animated menus (they’re chock-full of Easter eggs) further supplement a devilishly good, 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation. This being New Line, you know what you’re in for, including an above-average Dolby Digital 5.1 soundmix.
84 minutes; PG-13; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround; CC; DVD-9; Region One; New Line
