PG • 98 mins • 26 December

Director: Adam Shankman

Starring: Adam Sandler, Keri Russell, Guy Pearce, Teresa Palmer, Courteney Cox

Rating:

We suspect that few self-respecting SFX readers will voluntarily go to a Christmas family comedy starring Adam Sandler and a CGI guinea pig. And frankly, you’d be right to stay away. However, if you are forced to attend, then at least Bedtime Stories is tolerable, and occasionally fun – when it forgets to be dumb.

Sandler plays Skeeter, a handyman working at the hotel his dad once owned. His sister (Courteney Cox) asks him to babysit her kids, and Skeeter ends up telling them rambling stories – fairytales, cowboy and Indians, Gladiator epics, space adventures – reflecting his sad situation. Lo and behold, Skeeter’s stories start to be reflected in his daily life, in mischievous and unpredictable ways (there’s one very neat bit involving a rain of gumballs). Can Skeeter work out the rules of the bedtime tales before they lead him to a sticky end?

There’s modest amusement from the supporting cast, including Richard Griffiths as a hotel magnate with Howard Hughes-style phobias about germs, and Russell Brand – he’s only okay but his mere presence in a Disney family comedy feels like a funny-peculiar joke. Keri Russell acquits herself well as Skeeter’s reluctant squeeze, in a film that often descends into lowbrow pap but occasionally fires off some smart Charlie Kaufmanesque points about the nature of storytelling. Sandler himself… well, he’s just Sandler, and his best moment is probably when he has to make a sales pitch with a bee-stung tongue.

As for the bug-eyed guinea pig, it makes you long for the chipmunk from Enchanted. Mind you, maybe it should be spliced into the opening frames of every single copy of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. That’d teach film nerds to moan ad nauseam about one slightly dodgy-looking gopher…

Andrew Osmond