Adam Sandler gives cartoons a whirl in his animated musical, Eight Crazy Nights
Adam Sandler has always been an animated character, but for once, everyone else in his movie will be, too. In a gambit only the Waterboy might be able to comprehend, the Punch-Drunk Love star's second offering in less than two months is a cartoon musical about Hanukkah, titled Eight Crazy Nights (opening November 27). But at a time when you're trying to convince the world you're a serious thespian, why go the Hanna-Barbera route? "Because this way Adam can look really muscular and handsome," jokes cowriter Allen Covert, a Sandler associate since Airheads. "Also, we can have characters who look like our relatives."
Aside from satirizing family members, the Crazy Nights team wanted to create a Hanukkah/Christmas flick with the feel of the holiday specials they'd grown up watching ad infinitum on television--"something with a strong message and some shelf life," says director Seth Kearsley. "Something that could air on TV every season." Of course, the final product has been Sandlerized--rated PG-13 for poop jokes, heavy drinking, and prodigious belching. In the heartwarming tale, Sandler is the voice of Davey Stone, a hard-boozing troublemaker who's been a no-goodnik ever since his parents died when he was a kid. When Davey accidentally destroys his hometown's ice sculptures in a drunken snowmobile accident, he is put in the care of kindhearted, doddering senior citizen Whitey Duvall (also played by Sandler) and his half-sister Eleanore (Sandler yet again), and it's up to the elderly pair to teach him the true meaning of Judaism's greatest gift-giving bonanza.
With a supporting cast that features Saturday Night Live alums Jon Lovitz, Rob Schneider, and Kevin Nealon and a soundtrack that includes six original numbers and a rejiggered version of Sandler's seasonal standard "The Hanukkah Song," all involved are expecting a payoff sweeter than a bottle of Manischewitz. "This is going to be the biggest Hanukkah movie in history," vows Covert. "With no competition from anybody ever."
