EIGHT CRAZY NIGHTS is a bit of an enigma. In the Venn diagram of movie-goers, Adam Sandler fans are not an easy overlap with those who cherish holiday musicals. This lame attempt at comedy is more likely to appeal to the former than the latter. Unleashed by the medium of animation, Sandler's raging little-boy humor takes on an aura of threatening menace, tempered only by Davey's 11th-hour revelation, which does little to heal the wounds inflicted along the way. Unlike his personas in The Waterboy, Little Nicky, Happy Gilmore, or numerous Saturday Night Live skits, Davey -- Adam Sandler's proxy -- is seldom the object of the comical abuse, but it's instead the diminutive and furry Whitey who is the town's whipping boy. Though Davey's equal-opportunity hatred is (somewhat) explained, the treatment of the physically challenged Duvall twins by the town rings of a darker, crueler humor.

Families looking for something to watch together should steer clear, unless appreciation of outhouse humor is a family tradition. Clearly, this movie, with its taunting mockery of the physically challenged, its very graphic potty jokes, and its drunken binges also is not for animation fans seeking Disney's sweet concoctions or Pixar's wry wit. Older teens looking for the extreme edge of South Park will not be appeased by the suburban softness of fart jokes. All of this probably narrows the circle of appreciative audience members to those who want to see a feature-length movie along the lines of skits from Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation.