Rent Eight Crazy Nights (2002)

Adam Sandler’s Festival of Yikes - Eight Crazy Nights review by griggs

You know that feeling when a film turns up dressed as something interesting, then spends an hour proving it’s only here for the buffet? That’s Eight Crazy Nights. The title whispers “Chanukah oddity, step this way”; the film shrugs and serves up a vaguely wintry, generically heart-warming blob that could’ve been set on any Wednesday in December.

There is some charm. The animation’s soft and pleasant, like concept art for a better short, and I did laugh once at a real joke, which already puts it ahead of certain Netflix offerings. But it never finds a pulse of its own: no sense of place, no real personality, just a gentle drift from small peril to small lesson. When it does reach for laughs, it has a nasty habit of punching down – picking the easiest, most marginalised targets and calling it comedy.

The big problem is that promise on the box. If you’re calling yourself Eight Crazy Nights, maybe have more than a garnish of Chanukah in there. Nice enough while it’s on; gone from the brain before the menorah’s even lit.