by MATTHEW HAYS

You know that feeling you get, when you’re watching a movie with a bunch of kids, and you start getting really sad, because you know that the kids are on to the fact that what they’re watching was made by a bunch of nasty adults who are simply trying to rip them off?

That sensation overwhelmed me earlier this week, when I sat through Adam Sandler’s first animated film, Eight Crazy Nights, which in itself is being billed as some sort of breakthrough. Good god, this thing is so awful, it’s basically child abuse in big-screen format.

I guess Sandler wanted to throw a wrench into that legitimate-actor thing that’s been swirling around his career since Paul Thomas Anderson cast him in Punch-Drunk Love. Nope, here he is, back at the crap, in what must be one of the worst movies I’ve seen in years. Worst of all, beyond the wretched animation, tuneless songs and mindnumbingly stupid characters, is the fact that the filmmakers have tried to cover their ass by making this a children’s film. In other words, they thought they could get away with making something really sordid, unfunny and devoid of virtually any imagination simply because their target demographic was wee and defenceless.

Sandler voices several of the characters, principally a young man who hates Hanukkah and Christmas. He’s a bitter lush who’s caught drunk driving early in the film and almost sent to prison. An old man (also voiced by Sandler) steps in and tells the judge that he feels he can reform the wayward young man. But the young’un is bitter and treats the old man very poorly. Amid copious animated product placements, insert Grinch Who Stole Christmas-style-conversion here.

Eight Crazy Nights also attempts to pose as some sort of inter-faith movie. Being Jewish, Sandler makes the narrative inclusive, reaching out to both Christian and Jewish kids (though there’s no mention of Ramadan). The move backfires rather severely though. Instead of feeling my heart warm, I kept thinking that when they hold a Nuremberg Trials for criminally bad children’s movies, Sandler should be the first convicted. :

Eight Crazy Nights is now playing

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