Bedtime Stories (2008)

(Netflix Streaming, February 2016) Every six months comes another silly Adam Sandler movie. Even if Bedtime Stories falls under the Disney banner, the choice to target younger audiences doesn’t affect Sandler’s humour all that much: it’s still juvenile and broadly obvious. The high-concept premise here has to do with an underachieving janitor discovering that bedtime stories have real-world effects, and trying to take advantage of those for personal gain. Of course, the real plot has something to do with Sandler mugging for the cameras, first in fantasy sequences and then again in the film’s version of its real world. Some of it actually works, as silly and asinine it can be. At times, we’re left wondering what Guy Pearce did to deserve being stuck in a dumb movie like this; at other times, there are a few good jokes in trying to link fantasy with reality. Sandler himself has his own kind of charisma, even though Bedtime Stories often feels like a too-late attempt to recapture some of his earlier less mature roles, limited by rating from going in his typical angry man-child persona. It doesn’t amount to much, though, and kids will be served by plenty of other better movies.