The Best Part Of Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights Is Its Ridiculously Impressive Animation
(Welcome to Animation Celebration, a recurring feature where we explore the limitless possibilities of animation as a medium. In this edition: "Eight Crazy Nights.")
A box-office bomb and absolutely eviscerated by critics upon release, Adam Sandler's "Eight Crazy Nights" is an oft-maligned Hanukkah film filled with questionable attempts at humor, but with ridiculously impressive animation that showcases some of the best in 2D animation. Sandler stars as Davey Stone, a 33-year-old drunk who gets himself in trouble with the law after his narcissistic alcoholic tendencies get the better of him. In an attempt to offer Davey a chance at redemption under the guise of "holiday spirit," the judge orders him to spend the holiday season doing community service as the assistant referee for a youth basketball league. He has to stay out of trouble or face jail time. Davey thinks he's getting off easy until he meets the head referee — the eccentric, seizure-having Whitey Duvall.
"Eight Crazy Nights" takes a page from other holiday curmudgeon films like "Scrooged" or "How The Grinch Stole Christmas," with a very vague connection to the Hanukkah season. Davey is openly Jewish and openly disdains the holiday season due to past trauma, but the film has very little to do with the actual holiday. Many of Sandler's usual rogues' gallery is on board, like Kevin Nealon, Rob Schneider, Jon Lovitz, Blake Clark, Allen Covert, Carl Weathers, and his wife, Jackie Sandler. The film has been rightfully criticized for its content, but the phenomenal animation is something worth celebrating.
Yes, the humor hasn't aged well
Comedy, by design, is an envelope-pushing medium, which means it operates like a time capsule of social sensibilities and respectability politics. What was viewed as edgy or transgressive during the time of a comedian like Lenny Bruce has certainly evolved, and jokes about mocking people for existing in the late '90s and early '00s are rightfully out of style. "Eight Crazy Nights" opens with Rob Schneider doing an offensively racist voice of a waiter at a Chinese restaurant, and it's only downhill from there. When the film isn't outright problematic, it's leaning into the most juvenile sensibilities possible.
In arguably its most remembered moment, Davey tosses Whitey into a Port-a-Potty and pushes it down a hill like a sled. It feels like a gag birthed out of the "Jackass" gross-out stunt craze but written by someone who doesn't understand why "Jackass" is so beloved. When Whitey finally exits the toilet, he's covered in feces. Adding insult to injury, Davey sprays him with a garden hose to freeze him into a "poopsicle." A herd of deer shows up and licks the ice until Whitey thaws out, smiling wide to show their poop-covered teeth.
There are genuinely heartfelt moments scattered throughout the story, but the film is constantly derailed by questionable jokes and cheap, discriminatory attempts at "humor." Davey is given a tragic backstory in an effort to explain his Scrooge-like behavior, but he's not just a humbug — he's actively mean-spirited. It's hard to find laughs in someone whose behavior is often beyond redemption, which also makes it difficult for an audience to feel empathy for him.
The animation is gorgeous
If there's one undeniable positive, it's the animation. Clearly inspired by the legion of animated holiday classics, some of the best talents in the industry executed the film. Adam Sandler put together Meatball Animation Studio for "Eight Crazy Nights," which allegedly included former animators from Fox Animation Studios and recently laid-off workers from Warner Bros. Feature Animation, who were behind the perfect film, "The Iron Giant." Director Seth Kearsley has admitted that the film benefitted from the pivot from 2D to CGI animation. "All of these studios were shutting down, and we grabbed up talent that we otherwise wouldn't have been able to get," he told MEL Magazine.
Every frame of "Eight Crazy Nights" looks like a winter wonderland, with astute attention to detail in the landscapes and impressive fantastical sequences like "The Intervention Song" and "Bum Biddy" serving a feast for the eyes. Sandler's character is based on a photo of him from his younger years, and the artistic interpretation is spot-on. The shots of him looking dejected while watching a basketball game look like a funhouse mirror version of his character in "Hustle."
As "Eight Crazy Nights" takes place in December, the animation is doubly impressive in how well each scene believably looks like the winter season. The skies are gray, the snow changes texture, and it's clear Kearsley had the perfect eye for the project. As annoying as Sandler's voice is as Whitey, the character design of the 69-year-old referee looks like something out of a winter wonderland storybook. The real shame is that Kearsley has said he lost out on future opportunities because of "Eight Crazy Nights," which is incredibly unfair as the things people dislike about the film are elements that, for the most part, had nothing to do with him.
We need more Jewish holiday movies
Every year, studios, streamers, and TV stations crap out hundreds of Christmas movies, but "Eight Crazy Nights" is still the only studio-produced film about Hanukkah. The holiday rom-com machine has put out a couple in recent years, but they're still almost exclusively about multicultural relationships celebrating both Hanukkah and Christmas. The reality is that the dominant culture in the West sets its entire year around the Christmas holiday, which means that films about Hanukkah are often positioned relative to Christmas so that the general public will understand and have interest in the film. It's also why there aren't really films about Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, because these Jewish holidays don't take place near any of the Christian holidays.
"A lot of people like to hate on 'Eight Crazy Nights,' and to them I say, if you want to bury the movie, that's fine — make your own Hanukkah movie," director Seth Kearsley told MEL Magazine. "Make the Hanukkah movie that people love so much that they never watch 'Eight Crazy Nights' again." The fact that "Eight Crazy Nights" is the go-to title for a majority of movie lovers when asked about Hanukkah movies is the only argument needed for more Hanukkah films — because while the animated feature isn't anywhere close to being the worst Adam Sandler film (that crown belongs to "Jack and Jill"), the Jewish community deserves a far better showcase of their most well-known holiday.