It is a fact of movie reality that wishes always come true—just never in the way they were intended. This is true regardless of whether they are achieved via magic lamps, shooting stars, or pennies dropped in wishing wells. This year, Adam Sandler extends the rule to Bedtime Stories.
There is actually a lot of sadness hidden in the crevices of this Christmas release. Skeeter Bronson (Adam Sandler) grew up with his sister, Wendy (Courtney Cox), in a small
Cut to 30 years later. Dad is dead, the hotel has been transformed into a successful 4-star monstrosity and Skeeter is working as the maintenance guy (apparently a several-hundred-room elite hotel has just the one) still under the impression he might get to run things one day. The sadness of this level of self-delusion will go uncommented upon through the movie.
In other news, Wendy is now an elementary school principal and newly divorced mother of two young children, Patrick (Jonathan Morgan Heit) and Bobbi (Laura Ann Kesling). Because she is such a snob she hasn’t let Skeeter see these children in more than four years, essentially since they were toddlers. This unfamiliarity, however, doesn’t stop her from asking him to babysit for five days when she needs to go do some interviews in
Fortunately for Skeeter, a teacher at Wendy’s school (Jill, played by Keri Russell) will take care of the kids during the day, leaving him with the night shift. Early on, she correctly identifies Skeeter as an uncouth oaf but five days later—after having spent maybe five hours total with him—discovers deep feelings. The clingy desparateness of this on their parts will go uncommented upon through the movie.
The first night of responsibility, Skeeter is reduced to telling a made-up bedtime story with the assistance of his young wards. The next day he notices that parts of that story had come true, and immediately (and without any apparent moment of disbelief) sets out to work the system to his own advantage during the next three nights of storytelling. The lack of any humanistic center in the character of Skeeter evidenced by the fact that at no time does he consider using these three “wishes” to help mankind in general but instead only attempts to use it for shallow and immediate personal gain (such as a Ferrari) goes uncommented upon through the movie.
Of course, these sad things are not intended to be noticed, let alone commented upon. After all, this is a fairy tale! You can tell because the opening credits are a series of pop-up book animations. And the movie opens and ends with “once upon a time…” narration by Jonathan Pryce. And all the rotten things in fairy tales are supposed to be ignored. Plus, there is a CGI-augmented guinea pig mugging for the camera. How could one possibly notice that Skeeter is a pretty rotten person when there are guinea pig fart jokes to laugh at?
I suspect a lot of people will focus on the guinea pig, or the cute kids, or trying to figure out why everybody operating a major landmark hotel in Los Angeles is apparently either British (Griffiths, Pryce, Russell Brand), Australian (Lucy Lawless, Teresa Palmer) or both (Guy Pierce). Bland is OK, though, at times, and one of those times is about 4 in the afternoon when all the Christmas eating and present-opening is done, and suddenly everybody is looking at each other saying “what now?” and someone tremulously suggests a movie and the entire group leaps at as a bright light at the end of the holiday tunnel. Getting 15 people to agree on a movie that is also appropriate for the six children involved means selecting the lowest common denominator of blandness. After all, the options aren’t many if you won’t want to go see if Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a child-molesting priest in Doubt or boggle in the spectacle of child prostitution and terminal poverty in Slumdog Millionaire.
So, if you see Bedtime Stories this weekend, I’ll understand. If you see it next weekend, though, I’ll be shaking my head in disappointment.
Seeing as my mother always said, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all (actually she didn’t say that; she said, “There are three rooms in this house that need to be cleaned every day, I have three kids; do you really think that was a coincidence?”), here’s my nice thing: I absolutely must have Skeeter’s cell phone ringtone for my phone. Single funniest thing in the movie; by the end I was hoping he would just spend the day getting calls.
Details at a glance
- Bedtimes Stories is a Walt Disney Pictures release
- Wide theatrical release December 25, 2008
- Directed by Adam Shankman
- Screenplay by Matt Lopez and Tim Herlihy
- Starring: Adam Sandler, Keri Russell, Russell Brand, Jonathan Morgan Heit, Laura Ann Kesling, and Courtney Cox
- Rated PG for some mild rude humor and mild language.
- Running time: 95 minutes
- Alex’s Rating: 4 out of 10.
