Little Nicky


Little Nicky is a 2000 American dark fantasy comedy film directed by Steven Brill, written by Tim Herlihy, Adam Sandler, and Brill, and starring Sandler in the title role, Patricia Arquette, Harvey Keitel, Tommy "Tiny" Lister Jr., Rhys Ifans, and Rodney Dangerfield with supporting roles by Allen Covert, Kevin Nealon, Jon Lovitz, Michael McKean, and Quentin Tarantino. The film depicts the son of Satan and an angel who is tasked with returning his two brothers to Hell and preventing them from destroying the boundary between good and evil on Earth. Little Nicky was released by New Line Cinema on November 10, 2000. The film received negative reviews from critics and was a box office bomb, grossing $58 million against an $80–85 million budget.
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Plot

With his 10,000-year reign coming to an end, Satan must decide which of his three sons will succeed him as ruler of Hell. Adrian is the most devious, Cassius is the cruelest and Nicky is the kindest. Nicky has had a speech impediment and a disfigured jaw since Cassius hit him in the face with a shovel. Satan assembles his sons to tell them that as they are not yet ready to succeed him, he will continue ruling Hell.
Angered by this decision, Adrian and Cassius travel to Earth to create a new Hell by possessing religious and political leaders in New York City. As they leave, they freeze the entrance to Hell, preventing more evil souls from entering and causing Satan to begin to disintegrate. Stanley the Gatekeeper informs Satan of this and Satan punishes him by growing breasts on his head and giving him to his father Lucifer. Now too weak to stop Adrian and Cassius, he sends Nicky to Earth with a silver flask that traps whoever drinks from it inside.
Nicky has difficulty surviving on Earth and is killed several times, landing in Hell and returning to New York each time. While learning how to eat and sleep, he meets a possessed talking bulldog named Mr. Beefy, rents an apartment with an actor named Todd and falls in love with a design student named Valerie. Nicky encounters Adrian but fails to capture him and scares Valerie away. Nicky then observes Cassius on television possessing the referee of a Harlem Globetrotters game. Nicky arrives at the game and successfully tricks Cassius into the flask. Satanist metalheads John and Peter swear loyalty to Nicky. That evening, Nicky apologizes to Valerie and they begin a relationship after he reveals who he is and why he's on Earth.
The following day, Adrian possesses the Chief of the New York City Police Department and accuses Nicky of mass murder. Nicky has Todd kill him so he can go back to Hell and ask his father for advice. However, Satan has trouble hearing because his ears have fallen off, and his assistants are panicking because the deadline to capture Adrian and Cassius is approaching.
Back on Earth, Nicky and his friends devise a plan to capture Adrian in a subway station. Adrian discovers their trick and in the ensuing fight, he grabs Valerie and dives onto the track as a train approaches, but Nicky throws her aside, leaving himself and Adrian to be killed by the train.
Arriving in Hell just minutes before midnight, Adrian begins taking over Hell by pushing what remains of his father aside, sitting on the throne, rising to Central Park, and starting a riotous party. Meanwhile, Nicky wakes up in Heaven as a reward for sacrificing himself and meets his mother Holly, an angel who tells him that he can defeat Adrian with the "inner light" that he inherited from her.
After she gives him a mysterious orb, he confronts Adrian in Central Park. Adrian appears to win the battle by transforming into a bat and locking Nicky in the flask. However, Nicky escapes from the flask and shatters the orb, causing Ozzy Osbourne to appear, bite off Adrian's head, and spit it into the flask.
With his brothers captured, Nicky prepares to save his father. He and Valerie express their love for each other and she kills him. In Hell, Satan regains his body and suggests Nicky stay with Valerie to maintain things in the middle while stating to Holly that he still loves her. In the presence of Nicky and Satan, Lucifer shoves the flask containing Adrian and Cassius up Adolf Hitler's rump.
One year later, Nicky and Valerie live in New York with their infant son named Zachariah who has demonic powers.
A postscript revealed what happened to everyone:
  • Valerie accidentally struck Nicky with a shovel which fixed his jaw disfigurement, believing that he is "still no George Clooney".
  • Zachariah was suspended from nursery school after turning another kid's bottle of milk into moose urine.
  • Todd started his one-man show on Broadway which only a transvestite named Andrew/Nipples who attended Adrian's riotous party attended.
  • Mr. Beefy reunited with his rat girlfriend Heather where they got married last April and had five kids.
  • Stanley the Gatekeeper and Gary the Monster also had kids of their own.
  • Satan and Holly have been unable to deal with their long-distance relationship after dating for a while. Satan has been romantically linked to both the Blair Witch and Cher. Holly immediately fell in love with her new aerobics instructor Chris Farley.
  • Using their $25,000,000.00 reward money, John and Peter purchased Led Zeppelin's old touring airplane, stocked it with cake, beer and great tunes, died in a plane crash soon after takeoff due to a lack of a pilot, and ended up happily in Hell as honored residents who have been given Nicky's old bedroom to party in.

Cast

Reception

Box office

It opened at #2 at the North American box office making $16 million USD in its opening weekend, behind Charlie's Angels, which was on its second consecutive week at the top spot. The film went on to earn $39.5 million domestically and another $18.8 million worldwide, bringing the total to $58 million.

Critical response

Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B" on a scale of A to F.
Comedian and former Mystery Science Theater 3000 host Michael J. Nelson named the film the worst comedy ever made. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a score of two-and-a-half stars out of four, describing Little Nicky as "the best Sandler movie to date" and the Nicky character as "intriguing", while at the same time lamenting Sandler's lack of finesse and vocal quirks.
In 2020, Evan Saathoff of /Film argued against the characterization of Little Nicky as being "a blight on filmography", writing that Sandler "certainly never got this wild again, not in one of his own films at least."

Accolades

The film was nominated for five awards at the 21st Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture, Worst Actor, Worst Supporting Actress, Worst Director and Worst Screenplay. It lost in all categories to Battlefield Earth starring John Travolta. At the 2000 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, the film received seven total nominations: Worst Picture, Worst Actor for Sandler, Worst On-Screen Couple for Sandler and that unfunny bulldog, Most Annoying Fake Accent for Sandler, Worst On-Screen Hairstyle for Sandler, Most Annoying Product Placement for Popeyes Chicken, and Most Unfunny Comic Relief for the painfully unfunny talking bulldog. As noted, its only win was for Most Annoying Fake Accent.

Home media

Little Nicky was released on DVD and VHS on April 24, 2001, by New Line Home Entertainment. The DVD includes two audio commentaries, a special feature dedicated to rock/metal music, the music video "School of Hard Knocks" by P.O.D., and deleted scenes.
Scream Factory released the film on Blu-ray for the first time on August 8, 2023, with all the special features from the DVD release and a new master from a 2K scan.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack album, Little Nicky , was released October 31, 2000, through Maverick Records and featured a lineup that leaned heavily toward Maverick recording artists that included Deftones, Insolence, Muse and Ünloco.
;Notes
  • Tracks 8 and 12 were not featured in the film

Video game

A Game Boy Color game based on the film was released on December 15, 2000.