Satan has decided to stay in charge of Hell for a few more years, a decision that enrages two of his sons (Adrian and Cassius) who decide to create their own Hell on Earth and rule there instead. Whenever they leave Hell, Satan's powers begin to fade and has less than a week before he will be destroyed. With no choice but to send his third, weaker son, Satan sends Nicky to Earth to capture his brothers and bring them back to Hell and restore the norm. However the simple and naïve Nicky struggles to cut it in the real world.
I will always give Adam Sadler films a go because I often find just about enough moments of inspired lunacy among the puerile and pretty unfunny material. Sadly, this outing sees such a terrible plot combined with awful acting, unfunny writing, tired special effects and crude joking and almost no moments that took me by surprise and made me laugh. Instead the film is just plain stupid with very few laughs in it at all. Of course it may well appeal to some with its silly humour and its silly crude joking but personally it was pretty laugh free and the whole idea of the film was too dumb and silly to really work. The actual plot is never a really strong aspect of any Sadler film but here it is just all over the place. It is not that it makes no sense, it is more that it lacks any sense of fun at all and the dark tone is totally misjudged and the usual moments of inspired craziness is really limited to one or two moments (the best being the Fonz covered in bees!).
The cr*p script is not helped at all by a cast that is either rubbish or wasted. Sadler himself falls into the 'rubbish' camp with a performance that is like his usual mugging but even more unbearable. With his twisted expression and nasty voice, he was actually painful to watch and this is not based on a hatred of Sadler (I loved him in Punchdrunk a few days ago) it is based on the fact that this is a terrible performance with nothing but a terrible idea and a terrible character to work with. The support cast is made up of plenty of well-known faces but few are used well at all and too many of them are embarrassing. Keitel falls into the latter category and he has a thankless role that is not worthy of his talent. Ifans and Lister are given hard work by mostly doing voice work with poor dialogue (in their heads) and they were not funny at all. Arquette is given nothing to do at all but still manages to be lame and annoying. The various cameos are mixed Taratino is just dumb; Dangerfield is OK but not given enough time; Weathers, Witherspoon, Witherspoon and others are all given nothing to do other than show their faces but Lovitz and Schneider at least provide some unexpected weirdness in very minor roles.
Overall, Sadler films are normally average at best but I must say that I found this to be devoid of all but the slightest hint of the inspired humour that he can often create. The story is stupid and silly, the acting both bad and embarrassing, the script filled with misfiring jokes that are mostly in bad taste as well as being unfunny (a bad combination). A real waste of time that will only appeal to the most die-hard fans of Sadler and those that only like their comedy to be very basic indeed.
