I remember when it came out. There were huge posters. McFarlane toys made a Little Nicky action figure. It looked like the movie was expected to be big.
It bombed. I finally saw Little Nicky last weekend (it was two in the morning. I don’t have cable and nothing else was on). I was surprised to find myself liking the film. Except for punch drunk love, I have violently hated every Sandler film I have seen. The make up and special effects in Little Nicky were good. Some of the acting was good. Some of the writing was genuinely clever. I can’t say this about Happy Gilmore or Waterboy or Billy Madison.
Because the voice and mannerisms Sandler used for the Little Nicky character were claw your eyes out and jam chopsticks in your ears horrible. I’d rather listen to nails being scraped across a blackboard for 7 days in a row then Little Nicky’s voice.
I liked the movie, and still watch it every now and then when one of the local stations airs it. The speech impediment is what keeps me from buying it though.
I’m with the OP, in that Little Nicky and Punch Drunk Love are the only Adam Sandler movies I like. I don’t mind that his character is annoying, he’s SUPPOSED to be.
His character in “Punch Drunk Love” was very annoying too, but since the reactions of other people to the typical Sandler Asshole were presented realistically people saw it as a different kind of movie.
In most Sandler movies, his character is presented as an asshole, but as being smarter than most of those around him and a good person inside. He is annoying and offensive to those around him. Little Nicky was annoying but also very pathetic and humble, which I felt made the character more appealing.
I disagree that the plot and script were lame. But for the sake of argument, let’s say they were. IMO The list is true of Waterboy, Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore etc. Those films did not bomb. They made enough money for studios to want make more Adam Sandler movies. Therefore, your list does not explain why Little Nicky bombed.
My google-fu is failing me, but what else was being released in theatres at the same time as Little Nicky (November 2000, I believe)? It might have been up against another movie that better captured the attention of the Adam Sandler demographic.
I recall watching an MTV House of Style with Cindy Crawford show years ago where she did a segment on SNL and one bit showed her at the after party at a table with Chris Farley, David Spade, Phil Hartman and Sandler.
Farley was out of control drunk, screaming and shouting and trying to paw Crawford’s boobs.:rolleyes::rolleyes: He finally got taken away by Lorne Michaels and one of the birds who was on the show at that time.
ANYhoodle, Cindy starts talking to Sandler and he says (paraphrased), "I really don’t know why I’m on the show. I only have two (comedic) moves:
“Abuh!!! (makes a funny face and splays his arms out like a retard”
and
“Buh!!! (Makes more freaky motions with his arms and hands and starts talking in that dopey child voice.”)
A-List talent, no doubt about it.:rolleyes::rolleyes:
Dude Adam Sandler having no talent, while a very truthful statement, does not explain why his other movies would be successes while Little Nicky failed.
The ‘His voice was really annoying’ hypothesis has merit.
The ‘It faced stiffer competition at the box office’ hypothesis definitely bears looking into.
But ‘Sandler has no talent’ fails to conform to the known facts.
Well, Waterboy had the advantage of a good supporting cast, including Kathy Bates and Herny Winkler, each playing a character arguably far more screwed up than Sandler’s.
There’s also the fact that a good portion of the public (American or otherwise) will continue to laugh at fart jokes, toilet humor, obvious sexual jokes, and other forms of infantile humor.
In other words, you don’t necessarily have to be talented to get a few laughs.
Because he’d been doing the same movie for five years. The popular appetite for dick and fart jokes is bottomless, but the shelf life of any single performer for whom such material is their sole stock-in-trade is very limited.
Basically, Satan dropped the ball. Keep in mind that Y2K was a very busy time for the Prince of Darkness. What with influencing the results of the 2000 election, and sowing the seeds to ensure that the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq war would unfold according to plan, the Great Deceiver couldn’t give Little Nicky his personal attention.
The Archfiend erroneously assumed that his bastard goat-spawn, Adam Sandler, had already garnered enough popularity among the human soul-cattle to ensure the film’s box-office success. The public adoration of the diabolic flesh-puppet Sandler in the openly embraced role of Antichrist, fueled by the blood of innocents across the globe, would complete the Dark Rite that would loose the Seals of Armageddon and plunge the Earth into an eternity of damnation.
Fortunately for us all, even our depraved and immoral society proved incapable of simultaneously accommodating the Bush presidency and an Adam Sandler blockbuster comedy. Some say that the spirit of Jimmy Stewart himself manifested at cinemas across the nation, exhorting people to watch **Road Trip **or **The Emperor’s New Groove **instead.
I tend to think that Adam Sandler is for people who think Jim Carrey is too subtle a comedian.
Little Nicky got a 22% at Rotten Tomatoes. That’s worse than The Waterboy (30%), Big Daddy (40%), Billy Madison (41%), Happy Gilmore (57%) and The Wedding Singer (67%). Granted, Sandler films were critic proof, but by the time Little Nicky came along, people were getting tired of more of the same, and when the film is weaker
It’s clear that Sandler realized this, since he branched out with Punch Drunk Love (79%) at about this time. Even his comedies tried to be a bit less stupid. Mr. Deeds (22%, too) may be an abomination, but he was trying to move away from the LCD humor that had marked his career up to that point.