Eight Crazy Nights on DVD

Adam Sandler should stick to live action.

Eight Crazy Nights, his first attempt at animation, is what a typical Sandler movie would be if it had the humor removed.

Davey Stone (voiced by Sandler) is the meanest, nastiest person in town. There’s not a single soul who likes him, and we can’t really blame them. He’s rude to everyone, he constantly destroys public property, and he doesn’t care about anyone but himself. One night he causes a little too much trouble, so a judge sentences him to living under the supervision of Whitey (also voiced by Sandler), a local basketball referee.

Whitey is the opposite of Davey. He’s the most decent, caring, selfless human being in town. And, like so many nice guys out there, everybody takes advantage of him and treats him like dirt. But Whitey, wanting everyone to enjoy the holidays, does his best to bring out the best in Davey. Davey, as it turns out, is doing his best to ruin the holidays for everyone else. The best in him is buried so deep it’s pretty much pointless to try and bring it out.

The main reason Eight Crazy Nights is so unbearable is that the main character is so easy to hate. It gets to the point where we don’t care whether or not he ends up in jail, and just as he starts to redeem himself he gets worse than ever. No movie should have a protagonist that we’d rather see fail than succeed. But Davey is just such an ass that it’s impossible to find any reason to like him.

There is also a series of jokes in the movie that cross the line between being grossly funny and being just gross (and we’re not that easy to gross out). Many jokes also cross the line between being "funny mean" and unnecessarily mean.

It’s hard to get into the Christmas spirit with such a nasty movie, so maybe if you do plan on watching Eight Crazy Nights, you should wait until June. It does offer a few laughs, but even at 76 minutes, it takes a really long time.

A deservedly big flop, it’s rather surprising that Columbia Tristar didn’t do everything it could to get this movie on DVD before Christmas 2002, even though it only came out two months earlier (these days, that kind of turnover isn’t unheard of anyway). But now, a year later, for some reason it was given a 2-disc special edition, even though it does seem wholly unnecessary.

Disc one features 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and full screen transfers, a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track, and a few extras. Picture quality is pretty good, with bright colors that stand out nicely, and plenty of white that doesn’t drown out the action. There’s no dust or grain, and overall it looks pretty good. The audio is standard, with good front channels but not much surround use. Even during the musical numbers, the rear speakers are fairly reserved, with the center speaker doing most of the work. There would be ample opportunity for surrounds with the multitude of sound effects in the movie, but we’re pretty sure it wouldn’t have made it any more enjoyable.

Disc one features a commentary by producer/co-writer Allen Covert, Whitey, and Eleanor (Whitey’s sister, also voiced by Sandler). It’s basically just Covert and Sandler goofing around, which can be amusing, but it’s hard to sit through this movie a second time. That, of course, makes it that much more difficult to sit through the second commentary, which features director Seth Kearsley, Executive Producer Ken Tsumura, and a few others. It’s much more technical and again, can be amusing, but it’s yet another 76 minutes you won’t get back.

Disc two sports a number of short featurettes on various characters, their development, and the voice talent. There is also a number of deleted scenes that were thankfully cut. Finally, there is the HBO First Look special, and some multi-angle animation progression sequences.

Eight Crazy Nights, from Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment
76 minutes, anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) 16x9 enhanced, Dolby Digital 5.1
Starring Adam Sandler, Kevin Nealon, Rob Schneider
Produced by Adam Sandler, Jack Giarraputo, Allen Covert
Written by Brooks Arthur, Allen Covert, Brad Isaacs, Adam Sandler, Directed by Seth Kearsley

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