Bedtime Stories (2008)
Directed by Adam Shankman
Written by Tim Herlihy, Matt Lopez
Starring Adam Sandler, Courtney Cox, Guy Pearce, Russell Brand, Jonathan Pryce
Release Date December 25th, 2008
Published Decemer 24th, 2008
Oh what a shock! Sean hates an Adam Sandler movie. Stop the presses. Well, now wait a second. I was developing a grudging affinity for the former SNL star. I liked Punch Drunk Love. I thought he was tremendous in the terribly flawed movie Reign Over Me. And, I even liked You Don't Mess With The Zohan for the sheer glee of its offensiveness.
I honestly thought that Sandler was maturing and recognizing that even the most outlandish story, such as Zohan, needed some dramatic parameters. I thought maybe that he was developing a knowledge of how to build believable characters and motivations. And I thought maybe his juvenilia was evolving a little.
Oh how wrong I was. Bedtime Stories is the lowest piece of garbage that Sandler has crafted since Billy Madison. Insulting, stupid, beyond juvenile, this alleged 'family' movie from Disney of all places, ranks among the lowest moments of Sandler's already low career.
Bedtime Stories stars Sandler as Skeeter, a hotel handyman who had grown up in the hotel business. His father played by Jonathan Pryce, who also narrates the movie, once owned the hotel and lived their with his son and his daughter played by Courtney Cox.
Dad passed away not long after he had sold the hotel to a hotelier played by Richard Griffiths. He turned the tiny hotel into a massive hotel palace and kept Skeeter on as a handyman for some 20 years. Now he is about to open a new hotel and Skeeter hopes to run it.
Meanwhile, Skeeter's sis has lost her job and must travel out of state for a job interview. She needs little brother to watch her two kids for a week despite his having not seen them in four years. Nevertheless, he accepts. Each night at bedtime they require a story and for some unknown reason portions of the stories come to life the following day.
The script for Bedtime Stories was apparently penned on the back of a cocktail napkin. It read "Children's Bedtime stories come to life starring Adam Sandler". The rest of the production involved hiring a cast and director who would simply make up everything else that happens.
Nevermind if any of it connects into some coherent story or if the characters motivation or even their dialogue makes a lick of sense, we've got Adam Sandler and a premise, that's all the filmmakers felt they needed. Oh, how wrong they were.
What the cast and director Adam Shankman invented around this premise was brutal, unending stupidity. True garbage. None of the characters make any sense. Plot strands arrive and then are shoved off screen maybe to be revisited later. Characters are introduced and quickly dispatched without making a lick of difference to the story.
I realize that I am not supposed to care whether Skeeter would be at all qualified to run a hotel, it's not necessary information, but as presented I would not allow Skeeter to run a gas pump. Kids will not care that they are being insulted by such plot insinuations but I was endlessly irritated with the lack of care that anyone from Sandler to the director to the producers took with this plot construction.
But again, this is a kids movie you say. Why does it matter. The kids will love the bright colors and the googly eyed, farting guinea pig. They'll eat it up. Well, I will tell you why it matters. Because kids should not eat this up. Kids should not be subjected to such shoddy work.
Director Shankman's work is sloppy at best and Sandler hasn't been this lazy on screen since Mr. Deeds. Kids deserve better. They may not know it but they deserve better than to simply have their senses tickled. They deserve better than bright colors and fart jokes from a slipshod director and lazy superstar who do their jobs on autopilot why? Because it's just a kiddie flick.
No, kids deserve better. Kids deserve movies that don't patronize and appeal to their lower minds. Kids deserve movies that challenge them to think and imagine. They need and I believe they crave movies that expand their minds and make them think of bigger and better things.
Movies like Wall-E and Horton Hears A Who and Kung Fu Panda have been released this year and each of these animated features have entertained kids and caused their imaginations and intellects to expand. Kids came out of those movies laughing and smiling and best of all dreaming.
Bedtime Stories may occasionally make them laugh or smile but it won't make them dream. It will stifle them. They may not know it or show it but they will feel short changed. They will instinctively know that their time and their imagination has been wasted and the long term effect will be for them to expect less of movies.
The long term effect will be felt when years later they expect nothing of the movies and of art but the base visceral need for a distraction from daily life and that is a sad end. I know you will say I am overreacting and that Bedtime Stories is a mere trifle of a movie that will be long forgotten by most in less than a week but I am telling you, your wrong.
Bedtime Stories is an affliction. It is a long term damaging of the psyche. A movie whose future effect will be to lower the standards of what children expect of art and what they think is expected of them as people. If you care so little what you use to stimulate your child they will come to expect less of their own stimulation.
Bedtime Stories is the worst movie of 2008.
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