Here's a movie in which heaven is ingeniously conceived as the inside of a birthday cake, and critics everywhere defaulted to the post-chic anti-Adam Sandler stance. Audiences were unusually compliant with the faultfinders, given Sandler's vast fanbase; they flocked instead to Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, whose proprietary endorsement is likely the result of millions in hush dollars funnelled into The Widow Geisel's pocket. I'd be a very hypocritical automaton if I didn't disclose that I, too, turned the other cheek on Little Nicky when it opened in cineplexes last November, thus ignoring the holiday excursion with real imagination, gorgeous photography (courtesy of Theo Van De Sande) palpable warmth, and a funny, estimable ensemble, led by Sandler as the titular son of Satan.

Sent topside to the Big Apple to find his malevolent escaped brothers (Rhys Ifans and Tommy "Tiny" Lister, Jr.) before their father (Harvey Keitel!) decomposes, Nicky milks his transient New Yorker status: he moves in with a struggling Broadway actor (the always canny Allen Covert); gorges on Popeye's chicken; and endures repeated macings from design student Valerie (Patricia Arquette) because she gives him "the butterflies." As far as plots go, Little Nicky is a rather predictable Superman II-Waterboy cocktail (I realize that sounds new), yet key story elements waylay us, and the jokes, steeped in pop minutiae (to the point of elitism), frequently cross the line to wit. (I do concede that the Robert Smigel-voiced bulldog, Beefy, fast expends our charity.)

It appears as though the hostility that sometimes informs Sandler's on-screen persona has been volleyed into Nicky's severe facial contortion, which might be something like psychic substitution or pain deferment for the erstwhile Wedding Singer, since his nicest characters are also the most physically affected. (Relevant aside: it just occurred to me that the opposite is true for Jim Carrey.) That the general public shunned Sandler's harmless-dork portrayal of a demon is a comment on both the comic's stardom and the fire-and-brimstone genre, but I ask you: what is comedy if not the reversal of expectations?

Or maybe the Judeo-Christian afterlife is the sacred subject left in America. (In my final year of high school, I played a sarcastic Satan in a video for English class, and a classmate said I had assaulted (not just insulted) his belief system.) Certainly Little Nicky risks offence by conceptually purifying Hades as the place where bad souls land, where Old Gooseberry must be inherently good if he regularly takes time out of his busy schedule to shove a pineapple up Hitler's a$$--if he exists to punish wicked deeds. This helps the film's logic along (Nicky's angelic mother (Reese Witherspoon, in a hilarious cameo) met Nicky's father at a "Heaven and Hell mixer"), but logic and religion don't always go together.

For the first time, Adam Sandler has recorded a DVD commentary. Joined on New Line's Platinum Series Little Nicky by co-writer Tim Herlihy and co-writer/director Steven Brill, he sounds nervous describing anything other than what's happening in the story. A darn shame, but a second track, hosted by Michael McKean ("Chief of Police"; This is Spinal Tap fans know him as David St. Hubbins), offsets any disappointment. The Little Nicky disc is something else thanks to McKean's propensity for asking (screen-specific, amazingly) questions of his rotating panel (Jon Lovitz, Blake Clark, Peter Dante, Clint Howard, Rhys Ifans, and Kevin Nealon, among others) that alternately provoke laughter and squirmy embarrassment, not to mention the sheer number of his guests (ten in all). (Another record could very well be set by the deleted scenes section, which consists of 22 outtakes/extensions in 16x9-enhanced widescreen. I haven't much to say on these except, for the sake of structural unity, I wish they'd used the original ending.)

In the half-hour "Adam Sandler Goes to Hell", a reasonably good making-of, we hear from the effects team, Arquette, and others who didn't really get a say in either of the commentaries. Another doc, "Satan's Top Forty", constitutes a 17-minute history of hair metal from musicians and scholars alike. To that end, the DVD includes P.O.D.'s video for "School of Hard Knocks". Cast & crew filmographies, the theatrical trailer, DVD-ROM content (script and website access, screen savers, and more), and kooky animated menus (they're chock-full of cul-de-sac Easter eggs) further supplement a devilishly good, 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer and its creative Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. This being New Line, you know what you're in for.

Recommended:
Yes