Adam Sandler plays the devil’s youngest son in Little Nicky, a comedy about a family crisis in Hell that sends Nicky to Earth to stop his two older brothers. The film wants to be a fantasy comedy with heart, but the jokes land unevenly and the plot strains under its own weight. Little Nicky gets 5.8 out of 10.
Trailer, via ScreamFactoryTV.
Nicky’s Task
The setup is simple. Satan has three sons: Adrian, the most cunning, Cassius, the cruelest, and Nicky, the kindest. Nicky has a speech impediment and a broken jaw because Cassius once hit him in the face with a shovel. When Satan refuses to hand over his throne, Adrian and Cassius flee to Earth to build a new kingdom there. They possess religious and political leaders in New York City, freezing the portal to Hell in the process. This cuts off fresh evil souls from entering, and Satan begins to weaken.
Satan, now too weak to act himself, sends Nicky to Earth with a silver flask that traps anyone who drinks from it. Nicky lands in Hell and returns to New York repeatedly as he tries to survive. He meets a possessed talking bulldog named Mr. Beefy, rents an apartment with an actor named Todd, and falls in love with Valerie, a design student. The plan is for Nicky to bring his brothers back to Hell before Satan fully fades away.
The Cast and Its Weak Points
The cast is large and talented, but the script doesn’t give them much to work with. Here is who appears in the film:
- Adam Sandler as Nicky
- Patricia Arquette as Valerie
- Harvey Keitel as Satan
- Rhys Ifans as Adrian
- Tommy Lister Jr. as Cassius
- Rodney Dangerfield as Lucifer
- Allen Covert as Todd
- Peter Dante as Peter
- Jonathan Loughran as John
- Robert Smigel as Beefy
- Reese Witherspoon as Holly
- Dana Carvey as Referee
Harvey Keitel plays Satan with a sneer that sells the menace of the situation, even when the script asks him to deliver broad comic lines. Rhys Ifans and Tommy Lister Jr. play Adrian and Cassius, and both actors commit fully to the material. The film leans on physical comedy and sight gags, but the source does not describe their performances as cartoon villains.
Reese Witherspoon appears as Holly, a minor character in the story. Dana Carvey plays a referee in a Harlem Globetrotters game, a small part that gets a bigger laugh than it should. Rodney Dangerfield’s Lucifer is a recurring presence, but his scenes feel like filler rather than plot development.
Where It Falls Short
The film’s biggest problem is pacing. The middle stretches drag, with Nicky repeating the same pattern of failure and return to Hell for several scenes in a row. The jokes about Nicky’s awkwardness and his struggle to fit in on Earth grow thin quickly. A subplot about Satanist metalheads named John and Peter swearing loyalty to Nicky adds nothing to the story.
The film also struggles with tone. It wants to be a family comedy about a boy trying to save his father, but it keeps circling back to violence and destruction. Adrian and Cassius are so cruel that their actions feel less like comedy and more like a threat to the world around them. This tension never resolves itself into a satisfying whole.
The final stretch, where Nicky finally tricks Cassius into the flask and faces Adrian, moves faster but feels rushed. The resolution ties everything together neatly, but it doesn’t erase the fatigue built up earlier in the film.
A Mixed Legacy
Little Nicky was released by New Line Cinema on November 10, 2000. It grossed $58 million against an $80–85 million budget, making it a box office disappointment. Critics were harsh, and the film’s reputation has not improved with age.
The movie is a product of its era, a comedy that trades on broad humor and spectacle without much concern for subtlety. It works best as a curiosity, a strange entry in Sandler’s filmography that attempts something darker and more ambitious than most of his other work.
Little Nicky is not a bad film, but it is a flawed one. The cast is strong, the premise is clever, and the effects hold up surprisingly well. But the execution drags, the jokes fall flat, and the stakes never feel urgent enough to justify the runtime. It is a film worth seeing once, for its cast and its ambition, but not a film worth revisiting.
Little Nicky gets 5.8 out of 10.
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