Review: ‘Bedtime Stories’

Jeremy:

A lot of talk this Holiday-movie season has been about how much of a boxing match ‘Frost/Nixon’ is. Â  While the verbal sparring in that film may make for a great main event, there’s another match that makes a barn-burner of an under card bout. Â  It’s found in the film ‘Bedtime Stories’.

In one corner of this cinematic scrap, we have Happy Madison Productions, the Adam Sandler lead company that has made the man a proverbial King Midas where every piece of trash script he touches turns into box office gold. Â  In the other corner, we have Walt Disney Pictures, who, likewise, has a hankering for turning cheap premises into pretty financial wares.

The early moments of the film are pretty much handed to Happy Madison. Â  There’s a lot of Sandler’s typical brand of humor. Â  Sandler, as Skeeter, a hotel handyman whose father built the original hotel that was bought out, mocks the snobbish pretty people who work in the lavish hotel that has been built in the original’s place. Â  Even after the Disney side of the story where Skeeter has to babysit his niece and nephew and the bedtime stories he tells them begin to come true in the real world, the Sandler comedy continues. Â  All of the Happy Madison regulars are here. Â  Allen Covert and Jonathan Loughran make their cameos. Â  Rob Schneider even shows up just enough to get a variation of his “You can do it!” line in there.

In the latter half of the film, though, Walt Disney takes over, and Happy Madison is KOed pretty quickly by visions of red horses, daredevil chariot riders, and giant, snot monsters. Â  There’s even a plump hamster with buggy eyes that becomes the film’s comedic crutch. Â  Whenever there’s a lull in the story, just cut to the hamster, and you’ll get your core audience back in a jiffy.

That core audience is children by and large. Â  While some of the Happy Madison comedy might appeal to some of the more adult demographic, and it’s amazing even to me to consider anything done by Happy Madison as the adult side of a film, this film is for the kids. Â  The children who see this film are going to eat it up, every last fart-joke minute of it.

A lot of the angles the film takes are pretty cringe-worthy for us adults. Â  Some aspects of the film are downright mind-boggling. Â  The relationship Skeeter forms with Jill, a school teacher played by Keri Russell, is one of those confounded relationships that never make sense. Â  Neither of these people would ever fall for the other. Â  The relationship is thrown in here, because we need a love story, right?

Don’t even get me started on Guy Pearce’s appearance. Â  I rarely ever feel sorry for someone being in a film, but I feel sorry for Guy Pearce having to purse his lips and play the villain in ‘Bedtime Stories’.

The kids are sure to love ‘Bedtime Stories’. Â  If they’re at that age where you can drop them off at the theater, feel free to do so. Â  If you’re an Adam Sandler fan, don’t expect his typical antics for too long. Â  If you can’t stand Sandler or the more juvenile Disney flicks, skip this one altogether.

[Overall: 2.25 stars out of 5]