Bedtime Stories (film)

Did You Know?

• Director Adam Shankman described Sandler's character as a sort of 'Cinderfella' character and added 'He's like Han Solo.'
• The score was composed by Rupert Gregson-Williams and recorded with the Hollywood Studio Symphony at the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox.
• Commercials advertising the DVD feature background music recycled from the film Back to the Future Part III.

Plot

In 1974, Skeeter and Wendy Bronson are raised by their father Marty at the family business, the Sunny Vista Motel. Marty faces serious financial problems and sells the motel to Barry Nottingham, a severely germaphobic CEO of Nottingham Hotels. Nottingham rebuilds the motel into a luxury hotel on the condition that Skeeter will run it when grown up. Thirty-four years later, Skeeter works as the hotel's repairman.

Nottingham plans to close the hotel for a new one and appoints Kendall Duncan as future manager because Duncan is dating Nottingham's daughter Violet, though Duncan secretly has an affair with hotel manager Aspen. Wendy asks Skeeter to watch her children Bobbi and Patrick while she looks for a job in Arizona. The first night, Skeeter tells them a bedtime story set in a medieval fantasy world where he is an underdog peasant passed over for promotion.

The children add that he gets a chance at promotion and that it rains gumballs. The next day, Nottingham gives Skeeter a shot at the manager position, and gumballs rain from a truck crash. The following night, Skeeter tells a wild west story where he saves a damsel from bandits. He later saves Violet from paparazzi and sees her Ferrari car, mistakenly thinking she will give it to him.

Skeeter realizes only the children's additions come true. The next day, Skeeter spends time with and falls for his sister's friend Jill.

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, Bedtime Stories holds a 27% approval rating from 111 reviews, with an average rating of 4.4/10. The site's consensus states the film is uneven, poorly paced, and lacks requisite whimsy. Metacritic gives a weighted average score of 33 out of 100, indicating generally unfavorable reviews. CinemaScore audiences gave the film a B+ grade. Slashfilm predicted it would open number one during the Christmas weekend, but it debuted at number three grossing $38 million behind Marley & Me and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Over the standard three-day weekend, it ranked second with $27.5 million. By February 2009, the film had grossed $110,101,975 in the United States and Canada and $102,772,467 in other territories, totaling $212,874,442 worldwide.