Susan Granger’s review of “Bedtime Stories” (Disney)
After hitting a humorous home-run with “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” Adam Sandler bunts with this family-friendly fairy tale. Bumbling Skeeter Bronson (Sandler) works as a handyman at a hotel once owned by his father (Jonathan Pryce) that’s now under the aegis of germaphobic Barry Nottingham (Richard Girffiths), along with his heir-apparent manager (Guy Pearce). When Skeeter’s uptight, divorced sister Wendy (Courteney Cox) loses her job and has go out of town for a few days to interview for another one, she arranges for her schoolteacher friend Jill (Keri Russell) to care for her kids but, since Jill goes to night school, she asks Skeeter to babysit them in the evenings. Although he barely knows his young niece (Laura Ann Kesling) and nephew (Jonathan Morgan Heit), Skeeter – with the help of his room-service waiter buddy (Russell Brand) – discovers that he really enjoys entertaining the children with bedtime stories, particularly when some of his outlandish wish-fulfillment fantasies, the ones the kids have edited and amplified, start to come true in real life. Screenwriters Matt Lopez and Tim Herlihy dream up adventures in a medieval castle, the Old West and outer space but only on the most superficial level. It’s a strong indictment of the writing when a bug-eyed guinea pig gets the most laughs. Sandler amiably does his usual shtick, even if he’s getting a bit old to be the man-child, but a subplot involving Guy Pearce and Lucy Lawless falls flat. Director Adam Shankman’s pacing doesn’t seem to differentiate between a clever gag and a dumb one, making the 99-minute running-time seem like far longer. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Bedtime Stories” is a tepid, tedious 3. It’s an imaginative idea that’s never fully developed.
