Little Nicky (2000)

Little Nicky arrived in 2000 with Adam Sandler as the meekest son of Satan, dispatched to Earth to drag his brothers back to Hell before the family business collapses. Critics were unkind. It opened second behind Charlie's Angels and grossed fifty-eight million against a budget north of eighty. The picture's reported sins were dumb jokes and a grating voice. The reviews, for their part, found no social program to discuss, because there is none.

The ensemble is large and almost entirely white, with Tommy Lister Jr. and Patricia Arquette filling the two slots available. Nobody in the production appears to have given this a thought, which is itself the point. Arquette's Valerie studies design, falls in love, and dies on cue so the hero can ascend to Heaven. The postscript offers a transvestite named Andrew, also called Nipples, whose sole function is to be the punchline of a Broadway attendance gag. These are not statements. They are jokes from a period that did not audit its jokes.

Elsewhere the ledger is blank. No climate anxiety troubles the underworld. The film is so thick with Popeyes signage that it lost a Stinkers award for product placement, which is the opposite of an economic critique. Nicky's jaw is repaired by a shovel to the face, played for a laugh, and body image never enters the conversation. His speech impediment is an injury, not an identity. Hitler appears at the end as a receptacle for a flask, which is not historical revision so much as a cheap closing gag. Nobody lectures. Nobody has a lesson. The film simply wants to be silly for ninety minutes, and on that modest charge it is at least sincere.