What Went Wrong: Little Nicky
By Shalimar Sahota
August 4, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Little Nicky doesn’t look like it cost $85 million. While $20 million went to Sandler, it’s a little difficult trying to work out where the rest of the budget went. I’m going to hazard a guess at the production design and the special effects, since the depiction of Hell actually looks very well done. After the success of The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy and Big Daddy, New Line Cinema probably thought they were getting their money’s worth with Sandler.
Little Nicky (Adam Sandler) resides in Hell with his two brothers, Adrian (Rhys Ifans) and Cassius (Tom "Tiny" Lister Jr.). Their father, Satan (Harvey Keitel), is about to retire and pass on the role as ruler of the underworld to one of his sons. He makes the decision that neither of them are good enough, so he’ll rule Hell for another 10,000 years. Upset at their father’s decision, Adrian and Cassius go to Earth hoping to create their own Hell. Their departure causes the gates of Hell to freeze, which prevents new souls from entering and in turn causes Satan's body to start decaying. To put things right, Satan sends Nicky to Earth with the task of bringing his brothers home.
Little Nicky opened on November 17, 2000 and reached #2 with a decidedly average $16 million (held off the top spot by Charlie’s Angels). Given Sandler’s star power, and the high openings of his last two films, this should have opened to double that amount. It earned just $39.4 million at the US box office. Its worldwide takings came in at $58 million. It’s possible that audiences may have already had their devilish fill with Bedazzled, which opened a month earlier, and did okay business, given its low production budget of $48 million; it took $37 million at the US box office.
Directed by Steven Brill, Little Nicky plays like it’s being made up as it goes along. With three credited writers - Brill, Sandler, and Tim Herlihy (Sandler’s college roommate), the result is a juvenile comedy that’s more suited to a half hour sitcom than a feature film. Sandler has even said, “When I was thinking of these visual effects, it’s not like we’re George Lucas going, ‘Let's push the envelope’. We were just like, ‘Hey that would be funny, don’t you think?’” The lack of thought here is why we see an arrow shooting out of a dog’s nether-regions, and why Nicky is able to escape from a crowd by turning into multiple spiders. It may sound funny, but seeing it onscreen provokes no reaction whatsoever.
After one stupidly outrageous moment to the next, you just feel numb to the whole thing. The film opens with the brothers playing mind games with each other, a demon has breasts grow on his head, and as soon as Nicky arrives on Earth, he meets a talking dog and is hit by a train. The film utilizes the effects to come up with plenty of moments that seem outrageous for the sake of it rather than benefiting the story.
Upon realising that anything is possible in this film, it also loses the ability to shock and surprise, which is clearly the intention at times. It’s just that somewhere during the writing process came the thought, “I know, let's have a cameo of Henry Winkler being attacked by bees.” So it was written, done, and proves to be totally pointless. It must be some kind of necessity that Sandler’s films be stuffed full of celebrity cameos as well as sport references, hence a basketball game and the Harlem Globetrotters.
Audiences probably like Sandler’s man-child persona, but Nicky is more idiot-child than any Sandler character in his repertoire, meaning that it’s quite possible that audiences were put off by this alone. Nicky has a slouched look, a dippy hairstyle, and a speech impediment, made worse by a disfigured jaw obtained after his brother Cassius hit him in the face with a shovel. His voice is slow and wheezy, as if it’s painful for him to talk. I’d suggest having a scene where he gets hit in the face again, which results in some kid of remedy cure, but instead audiences have to endure that grating voice throughout the whole film, and at times it’s difficult to work out what he’s even saying. It’s enough to put me off of wanting to see Sandler in anything ever again.
Reviews for the film were horrendous. While Sandler’s previous films, The Waterboy and Big Daddy, also suffered bad reviews (though not as bad as Little Nicky), they still managed to earn over $150 million at the US box office. Many reviewers cited that for a comedy, Little Nicky just wasn’t very funny, and this is true. The film may be mercifully short at just 80 minutes long (and that doesn’t include the closing credits), but throughout that running time I’ll admit to laughing on only two occasions, with the epilogue being the funniest part of the film.
Not only was Little Nicky a flop, but it was also nominated for five Razzie awards, including worst film, worst actor and worst director. It didn’t win any, for Battlefield Earth had a runaway victory in almost every category that year. I just don’t get what New Line Cinema saw here. They must have been blinded by Sandler and gave him free reign to do whatever he wanted, because I cannot justify spending $85 million on it. If they wanted a comedy, then I think it would have been funnier if it were actually played completely serious.