I really had no intentions of seeing ‘Bedtime Stories’ since I was out of town for the critics screening, and it would’ve seemed just as well since it’s been roundly and soundly panned, but my son whined and whined and whined about seeing the damn thing.  Ooops, this is a family movie so let’s say seeing the ‘darned’ thing.  The boy is going to be 13 in a few months and has long since left the happy meal behind so I’m thinking he’s outgrown these kiddie movies and should be sneaking downstairs to watch Cinemax at night but no, he apparently hasn’t.  When ‘Bedtimes Stories’ started I gotta admit things were looking kind of suspect but then strangely enough it started making me laugh.  I’ll be the first to tell you this isn’t that hard to do since I can find humor in just about anything, but ‘Bedtime Stories’, while certainly no artistic masterpiece, wasn’t nearly as bad as I was led to believe it was.

Actor Jonathan Pryce lovingly narrates as Marty Bronson, once the owner of a little motel in Los Angeles where he uses his son Skeeter, who will grow up to look just like Adam Sandler and his daughter Wendy, who will grow up to look just like Courtney Cox as illegal but willing child laborers.  Unfortunately Marty isn’t much of a businessman and is forced to sell his humble spot to powerful hotel magnate Barry Nottingham (Richard Griffiths) with the one promise that Skeeter will be allowed to run the hotel one day if he works hard and has the ambition to do so.

Many, many years later the hotel is a crown jewel in the center of Los Angeles and Skeeter does work there but as a handyman and not the big time manager he still hopes to be, but it’s all good as he has a nice simple life, a best friend in the smarmy Mickey (Russell Brand) has reconnected with his recently divorced elementary school principle sister and her two young children Patrick (Jonathan Morgan Heit) and Bobby (Laura Ann Kesling).  Some movie type plot stuff is going on that involves a closing of the elementary school, a new hotel and Wendy having to look for a new job which

leads to Skeeter babysitting his niece and nephew, working side by side with Wendy’s home girl and pretty schoolteacher Jill (Keri Russell) – who initially can’t stand each other but we know very well that this won’t last.  This is when Skeeter starts telling the kids these fantastic bedtime stories.

The odd thing about these stories is that whatever he tells them, and particularly when the kids adlib to the stories, these little tales somehow play out in real life and once Skeeter figures this out he tries to use it to his best advantage.  This would include getting the hot chick, a sweeter job and a fresher ride but alas all that glitters is not gold as Skeeter will learn valuable lessons about life, love, ambition and all kind of other important sappy contrived stuff.

Rest assured my friends that there is nothing that’s the least bit innovative, fresh, unique or different about ‘Bedtime Stories’ as it deviates from form or convention not even a little tiny bit.  The basic story is so standard and so utterly predictable that it’s almost original in that it’s so predictable, thus anyone looking for an intellectual challenge, please look elsewhere.  And if you’re going to a Happy Madison production looking for intellectual stimulus, is it really their fault that you left the theater disappointed?

So now that we’ve accepted the ‘Bedtimes Stories’ won’t be a life altering experience, what it ended up being was a lot of fun, very funny in quite a few spots, and filled with cast members who knew exactly what kind of movie they were in and seemed to enjoy being in it.  Rob Schneider shows up in his regularly scheduled scene stealing cameo, we have the always cherished and appreciated Lucy Lawless sighting, Guy Pearce plays a slippery bad guy about as good as anybody and the kids are so disgustingly cute that they almost make you want to puke.  And who is this Russell Brand character?  I don’t know if he can act or not but he’s like magic doing that thing he does.  He did that thing in the ‘Sarah Marshall’ movie completely taking that movie over and he does it here too, though there’s no way Adam Sandler wouldn’t allow Brand to steal the movie from Adam Sandler.

I did find it funny that the six year old boy was playing with an Evil Knievel Stunt Cycle because you could probably go to just any first grade class and ask ‘Kids, who’s Evil Knievel’ and be met with deafening silence.  Being that me and Adam are close to the same age and we both probably had that very same toy, I appreciated the homage.  There were actually a couple of things that I related to more so than my poor culturally deprived son did.  These kids think they have it so good with their life like videogames, Ipods and G1’s.  Like my son will be reminiscing with his friends years from now about how cool his Apple Touch used to be.  Remember when we had to text on a number keypad guys?

I don’t know exactly what people expect when they go to a movie like this, but this one delivered exactly what I expected and maybe even a little bit more.  Yeah, it’s almost completely gone from my conscious mind right now, but for the ninety or so minutes while I was watching it, I had a pretty good time.