Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
12/26/08
We can nitpick details all
day long (Yes, Ray Liotta is batting with the wrong hand as Shoeless Joe
Jackson in Field of Dreams, and no, I have no idea what Tommy Lee
Jones means when he says “Either I'm lying or I'm going to shoot you” near
the end of The Fugitive, since what he said was that he wasn't going
to shoot Harrison Ford), but in the end most movie battles are won or lost
based on tone and characters. Bedtime Stories, Adam Shankman's
high-spirited follow-up to the wondrous Hairspray,
has both of those things nailed. It's about fairy tales for kids,
but it's really a fairy tale for grown-ups, where hard work and good-heartedness
prevail over back-stabbing and spite in a way they so rarely really seem
to do. With a strong cast succeeding in being either relentlessly
likable or hissable as their roles require, Stories easily surmounts
the fact that its' plot makes only the most superficial pitch meeting kind
of sense.
We begin with narration care
of the late Marty Bronson (Jonathan Pryce), who explains how he devoted
himself to the dream of owning and operating a motel, assisted by his son
“Skeeter” (Thomas Hoffman) who loved to let his imagination run wild in
its' many rooms. But alas, Marty was a crappy businessman and had
to sell to Barry Nottingham (co-writer Tim Herlihy), who promised that
if Skeeter worked hard, he would eventually become the hotel manager.
Fast-forward a couple decades, and Barry (Richard Griffiths) is a billionaire
hotel magnate and Skeeter (Adam Sandler) is still the handyman. Nottingham
plans to demolish the already deluxe hotel he built on the site of Marty's
motel and build a new one to be managed by Kendall (Guy Pearce), whose
primarily qualification is that he's the fiancee of Nottingham's daughter
Violet (Teresa Palmer). Kendall's also aided by the scheming clerk
Aspen (Lucy Lawless) while Skeeter's only ally is his best friend, the
not-altogether-there room service waiter Mickey (Russell Brand).
These are tough times for the Bronson family: sister Wendy (Courtney
Cox) never cared for the motel business and made a living as a school Principal,
but now her school is scheduled for closure, leaving her to go job-hunting
in Arizona while Skeeter and her teacher friend Jill (Keri Russell) take
turns watching her two children. Skeeter was banned from the house
after punching her now-ex-husband years before and doesn't really know
his nephew Patrick (Jonathan Morgan Heit) and niece Bobbi (Laura Ann Kesling).
Wendy's oh-so-politically correct house has no TV or edible food, so Skeeter
passes the time telling the kids elaborate bedtime stories based on his
own life of finishing second to Kendall. But when the kids chime
in that a medieval routing at his rival's hands is unfair and that the
King should allow both men to compete to “run the castle” while it rains
gumballs, something peculiar happens. The next day, Nottingham indeed
decides to let Skeeter draw up a proposal for the new hotel's theme to
challenge Kendall's, with the winner becoming the new manager. And
it does kinda rain gumballs...
Yes, it's true: all
the details the kids add to Skeeter's stories come true the following day,
either literally or metaphorically. How? Why? Your guess
is as good as mine, and Bedtime Stories writers Matt Lopez and Tim
Herlihy don't much seem to care. The payoff on the stories varies
so wildly that you could even think that most of them are simple coincidences,
although the part with Skeeter's high school classmates dancing the Hokey
Pokey is hard to rationalize. Skeeter even speaks directly to his
narrating father (a prime suspect as the source of the magic) at one point,
but the movie works best when its' feet are most firmly planted on the
ground (or at least its' Disney comedy counterpart), and that's because
of the cast and Shankman's skill at setting a positive tone.
Adam Sandler rose to fame
as a comic anarchist, another of those Saturday Night Live comedians
who're funniest when they're yelling, but he's matured into an actor capable
of great reserves of decency and likability. Sure, Skeeter's a goofball,
but he's a good guy, and that's why we root for him. I repeat my
vow to build a machine that will allow me to slide to an alternate universe
where Keri Russell is single and propose marriage: she's got that
special something that makes it possible for her to be movie star gorgeous
but never less than believable as an ordinary person. She and Sandler
make a really good couple: another sign of his growth as an actor
is that he's really started to strike sparks with his leading ladies, and
he also has good paternal chemistry with the kids. Brand is delightful,
albeit not particularly convincing, as the crazy sidekick, while Griffiths
is a hoot as the germophobic Nottingham and Palmer finds some nice depth
in her faux Paris Hilton role.
And then there's Pearce,
a fine dramatic actor who can occasionally be persuaded to let his inner
hambone come out to play (The Count of Monte Cristo, anyone?).
As Kendall and all his fantasy world variants, he's a self-absorbed delight,
reveling in every small victory over the little people, climaxing in a
gloriously wrongheaded pitch delivered as an elaborate song and dance number.
Everyone who's ever hated “that kiss-up” in the office will recognize him
in Pearce's smarmy grin, and only his oily villainy can salvage some late
game plot twists that desperately try to amp up the stakes because yes,
he IS a guy who'd blow up the school while the kids were still in it.
It's a really exceptional performance, designed to deliver maximum bang
for the audience's buck.
As mentioned, the script
has issues: Kendall would need to be the screenwriter himself to
be plotting to undermine Skeeter's relationship with Jill before it's even
really a relationship, and the entire cast turns on our hero at the moment
of “The Crisis” for seemingly no other reason than that a Syd Field screenplay
model is making them all do the emotional Hokey Pokey. But all the
movie really needs to be able to pull itself back into place are the strengths
of the eternal struggle between Skeeter and Kendall and the sincerity of
his relationships with his sister, niece, nephew and girlfriend.
I really wanted all this stuff to work out, and Shankman is able to make
those big moments sing.
While adults are following
the characters and emotions, kids will obviously be there for the fantasy
sequences, which are certainly cute. Even better is the kids' improbable
pet, a CGI guinea pig with bulging eyes who made me laugh every time he
appeared onscreen. Like much of the rest of the movie, his existence
is never explained, but he's good for some laughs.
Bedtime Stories delivers
a little something for all its' potential target audiences. The kids
get a little fantasy, Sandler's fans get a little slacker wackiness and
downtrodden employees everywhere get a little payback. I can't answer
a single logical question about the story, but I came out of the theater
with a smile on my face, and that, after all, is the point. Either
I'm lying or I didn't like it. |
