2-3 years of exposure to this movie via Tiktok sounds finally got the better of me, and I decided last night, through a fugg of mince pies and rum hot chocolate to see if the early 2000’s Animated Adam Sandler vehical ‘Eight Crazy Nights’ was as fun as my ‘for you’ page kept telling me it DEFINITELY was…It was not.

The plot is set in the small town of Dukesberry and follows ‘Davey Stone’. Davey used to be the towns best juniour basketball player, and was seen as a model citizen of the community, but after a tragic incident in his preteens, the now 33 year old alcoholic is a delinquent and on the verge of throwing his life completely away. When Davey has a major involvement with the local law enforcement, the judge is all but ready to throw the book at him. When help from the past arrives in the form of ‘Whitey’ a tiny extroadinarily hairy man with one adult sized foot, and one child sized foot.

Whitey has been a silent pillar of the community now for the better part of 70 years, running the juniour basketball league for most of his life, and as a side hustle he spends his days travelling around Dukesberry picking up odd jobs whenever they arise in order to pay the bills and to keep both him and his sister comfortable.

Whitey offers the judge an alternative, put Davey under his care and guidence with the goal being to train him as the new juniour basketball league coach, so that Whitey can wind down his career. The judge agrees, on the condition that Davey does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING else, and if he does, the Judge, without hesitation, will give him a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Davey has other ideas though, and what follows is a battle of wills, as Whitey desperately tries to appeal to Daveys past better nature, and Davey takes every opportunity to belittle, prank and injust Whitey, while also making everyone elses lives a misery in the process. But when its revealed that theres an upcoming awards evening and that Whitey has his heart set on winning the ‘Patch’ an award recognising the citizen of dukesberry who’s made the most impact on the community (Something he’s been trying to win for years) It may fall to Davey to reconnect with his festive spirit and help an old mans dream come true.

I’ll get the nice things out of the way up front on this one really, its nice to see a film attempt to do a contemporary Chanuka story, and while it does muddy Christmas into the mix a fair bit, I appreciated that this film was at least trying to make a somewhat serious attempt at a holiday movie for it. I will also say that the animation here looks quite nice for the most part, and that studded throughout this film are several legitimately funny moments and gags. stuff that actually made me properly laugh, and (some) songs that I thought were well written and composed, catchey even…

But its there really that my praise kind of begins and ends. I knew going into this, that this was ultimately an ‘Adam Sandler’ film, so I wasnt exactly expecting to find something that would absolutely blow me away. But this film has a serious identity crisis that pretty much hamstrings the entire thing.

First up is the plotting and pacing. Its pretty much inescapable that this films script is just, kind of incoherent. a massive chunk of the film is just Davey being genuinely unkind to people, and even when its revealed WHY he’s so mean, his redemption and character transformation; and the rewards he gets for doing so, dont feel earned and dont make a whole lot of sense. there comes a point about 15 minutes from the end, where something of an intervention happens (entirely in Daveys mind) and then suddenly, not only is he a completely changed man, but the town seem to completely 180 on him, and he suddenly becomes the 2nd most loved man in the town, despite only about 20 minutes taking place ‘in film’ where, 20 minutes prior, the town were actively hunting him to put him in jail.

Its a movie that seems totally content to just disregard character development arcs and growth, stuff just happens in this film, and the audience are just expected to go with it, which I found quite jarring and it really threw me out of the thing. Not to mention that the act structuring is pretty much all over the place, the films treated more as a series of ‘gag’ vignettes with a very feint story running through it. When it can be bothered to push the plot along, it will. But once that first 20 minutes of ‘first act’ establishing stuff is out of the way, the whole film essentially just collapses into sketch comedy and the aforementioned jarring plot changes that we’re just supposed to go along with.

Then theres the humour, as mentioned; there are a handful of moments across the runtime that are genuinely funny. Stuff that actually came across as smart and fairly well written. but for about 75% of the runtime? This is a PG13 movie from 2002 made by Adam Sandlers production company and it feels every INCH of it. Big recurring gags in this film include Whitey having seizures randomly, TONS of fart and poo gags, gross out humour, dirty jokes, innuendos…lowest common denominator gags that…unless you were a 10-15 year old kid between 2002 and 2005, land like cold sick to any other demographic.

I could have accepted some gross out a handful of times in the mix with other gags. But its just relentless, barely 15 minutes goes by without someone being covered in poop, visually on screen pooping, or folks talking about poop. Theres also a surprising amount of swearing in the film, which caught me off guard, because It made me kind of realise that I dont really know who in 2025 this film would actively appeal to, the amount of swearing, dirty humour and graphic gross out means its not really a kids movie, it wouldnt be good as a family movie with younger kids either. I think if your an adult coming to this for the first time, unless your MASSIVELY into Sandlers other productions, you’ll find this thing grating…really, the only people I could see (maybe) getting into this, were the kids who watched it when it came out in the 2000s, who now revisit it for nostalgia, or families with older kids who also REALLY like Adam Sandler movies. Which, as you can imagine, really puts this film in with a niche crowd.

The characters are all pretty stereotypical, though im inclined to believe that was intentional, if not a little border racist at times. the narrative is hazy and inconsistent. The whole thing just kind of felt sloppy and underdeveloped to me.

As mentioned, I will say the visuals are fairly well handled, the animation is smooth and consistent, theres some subtle early CG work here that works quite well to compliment the art style, it looks quite nice to me. It feels wintery and festive, which is all you can really ask for.

Performance wise? Well…its Adam Sandler being Adam Sandler, he doesnt sound terrible, but if he did, id have had more questions than answers, he also voices Whitey in this…and its horrendous, its unmistakably just Adam sandler doing a shrill high pitched voice. it sounds like the kind of ‘fake voice’ V/O artists do for a gag inbetween takes, but somehow this actually ended up in the movie. It works in places, but for the vast majority of the runtime, its nails on a chalkboard.

Cameos from Jon Lovitz and Tom Kenny were welcome, but fleeting…everyone else sounded like they were in the booth till the cheque cleared.

This is also a musical, and the soundtrack is pretty hit and miss. The two big songs from the film that seem to have made it to Tiktok (Technical Foul and the ‘Bum Biddy’ song) are the best the film has to offer by a long LONG margin, with the other songs ranging from fumbled and kind of awkward, to just downright unlistenable, even having Alison Krauss on vocals for some numbers doesnt save them, the incidental music however? pretty damn solid if you ask me, probably one of the stronger elements of this one!

Im glad I saw ‘Eight Crazy Nights’ at least once, and I cant say I wont EVER watch it again…But its a seriously flawed movie that had more about it that I didnt like, than stuff that I did. I think if you caught the two songs I mentioned above on youtube, id say youd pretty much seen the best of this movie, Im sure it has its fans, and I didnt actively HATE it…but it wasnt really fore me.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/eight-crazy-nights/