An entirely bland Adam Sandler comedy – his first family-friendly film – Adam Shankman’s Bedtime Stories has a game cast but a disappointingly weak script.
The imaginative titular stories Sandler’s character tells his niece and nephew are relegated to brief five-minute sketches while the rest of the film focuses on such exciting topics as hotel management, city planning, and school closures.
Sandler stars as Skeeter Bronson, janitor and handyman at what was once his father’s hotel; Dad (Jonathan Pryce) made new owner Barry Nottingham (Richard Griffiths) promise that Skeeter would one day be given the opportunity to manage the hotel when he was forced to sell, but when a new project is announced Skeeter is passed over in favor of brownnosing Kendall (Guy Pearce), who also happens to be dating Nottingham’s Paris Hilton-like daughter Violet (Teresa Palmer).
Skeeter takes the night shift looking after his niece and nephew while his sister (Courtney Cox) is away, and he tells them some harshly realistic bedtime stories that reflect his current situation; the unimpressed kids add their own fantasy bits to liven up the proceedings, like insisting a peasant character be given a chance to become king, or having it magically rain gumballs.
When the stories seem to start to affect reality, and Skeeter is given a chance to become the new hotel manager, he tries to manipulate the stories to better serve himself. Of course, he doesn’t quite count on the kids’ irreverence in storytelling.
Bedtime Stories has an unusually talented cast for this kind of material, starting with Pryce, Griffiths, and Pearce, and ending with talented comedians like Allen Covert and Nick Swardson in cameo roles.
Russell Brand, hilarious in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, shows up as Skeeter’s buddy at the hotel. They’re all wasted. Especially Pearce, who could’ve made a terrific villain but instead portrays someone we don’t care enough about to hate. Sandler returns to his usual persona, but tones everything down for the family-friendly atmosphere to mixed results.
Mostly unfunny, the film tries to draw humor out of repeated sight gags like the kids’ CGI bug-eyed gerbil (an almost scary, mostly sad-looking creature), and their random diversions from Skeeter’s story, like a fat guy on a beach or a violent dwarf.
Still, Bedtime Stories is inoffensive and light-hearted, and kids may like the brief fantasy elements enough to ignore the film’s other faults. The rest of us should stay away.
