Bedtime Stories (**½)

Directed by: Adam Shankman
Starring: Adam Sandler, Keri Russel, Guy Pearce, Courteney Cox, Lucy Lawless, Jonathan Pryce
Seen: January 31st 2009

*** Out of ****

It is fun to watch a very innocent Disney movie that still has a heart and a bit of a life-lesson. Bedtime Stories does not for one minute parade itself as anything else, which in my eyes is a great thing, it’s an honest movie, and I believe there’s something here for kids and adults to enjoy.

Skeeter Bronson (Sandler) grew up in the Sunny Vista Motel/Nottingham Hotel. His father ran the motel which he had to sell to Barry Nottingham because while he was good at running a hotel, he wasn’t good at running its finances. Barry Nottingham did however promise Marty Bronson (Pryce) that Skeeter may one day run the hotel. Once this bit of exposition is done with, we now see present time, and Skeeter is the hotel handyman, with Kendall (Pearce), Violet’s boyfriend, and thus Barry’s prospective son-in-law, running the hotel.

Skeeter’s sister, Wendy, loses her job as principal at a local school since the school will be demolished, and she leaves her two at first reluctant children, Patrick and Bobbi, to her brother while she goes job-hunting. That night he tells them a story, and Patrick adds to it – “and then it started raining gum balls”, and the next day this comes true while Skeeter is driving across town.

Initially Skeeter only sees value in this for himself, but he soon realises that only the parts the children add to the stories come true – and they are adamant about certain elements in the story, saying that anything can happen just because it is a bedtime story. And almost anything does, with some interesting consequences. Quite interesting scenarios are drawn up where parallels between real-world and story-world become background elements that you might not always catch on to. XXX (Lawless) for instance, is not an extremely courteous or decent person in real-world, and in the fantasy stories she becomes a troll or some sort of lobstrosity (thank you Stephen King), while Kendall becomes Sir Butkiss, and many other smaller connections.

The scenarios are ridiculous, but the premise of the film fully allows for that, and the fun lies in running with it, not stopping and investigating what is going on… I also find it quite senseless to put too much of an emphasis on actors’ performances in a film such as this – the idea is to overact and be laughable for the kids, and Sandler, Pearce, Russel and Cox are all just perfect in their roles here.