Bedtime Stories is one of those stories told at bedtime: safe, comforting and predictable. But there is a topping: it has Adam Sandler, a hero whose main virtue isn't his looks, kingdom or valour but a likeability that helps you overlook all of it.

| Apr 26, 2019

| Original Score: B- | Feb 18, 2012

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Far from another Jumanji, any magic director Shankman tries to inject is squashed by Sandler's distressingly annoying turn, while Russell Brand and Keri Russell look uncomfortably crowbarred in.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 5, 2009

It's a pleasing concept, and Sandler is at his least obnoxious, but surely Adam Shankman's family comedy could have been wittier.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 5, 2009

There's a surface liveliness to the movie, but it has that plasticky Disney quality and lack of real heart.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 5, 2009

In Bedtime Stories Adam Sandler gives his most bearable performance yet.

| Jan 5, 2009

Dreams really do come true in this family comedy but, as usual, there's a price to pay. For the audience, that price is watching Adam Sandler.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 5, 2009

The twitchy anxiety that once powered his persona has given way to a doughy anonymity.

| Dec 29, 2008

After sitting through this fractious fairy tale, we feel as plucked as a Christmas goose.

| Dec 29, 2008

An innocuous but haphazard family comedy that seems less crafted for children than dreamed up by a team of them.

| Dec 29, 2008

It's a delightfully innocent movie that the actor can actually show to his two baby daughters without blushing.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 29, 2008

Richard Griffiths best gets the antic spirit of this enterprise, relishing his multiple roles as Sandler's phobic boss and several fantasy characters.

| Dec 29, 2008

Sandler's laziness, sloppiness, and cynical pandering are all over Bedtime Stories, and it turns what's intended to be a graceful intersection of fairytale whimsy and real-world slapstick into an ugly, head-on collision.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Dec 29, 2008

If you listen carefully to the strains of 'When You Wish Upon a Star' during the Disney corporate intro, you may hear Walt moaning in his grave.

Full Review | Dec 29, 2008

For prepubescent kids, Bedtime Stories will be a perfectly enjoyable work -- a PG-rated introduction to a heralded comic actor trying to inspire a new generation of Adam Sandler fans.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 29, 2008

All director Adam Shankman can think of to do is encourage Adam Sandler to mug like a chimpanzee

| Original Score: D | Dec 25, 2008

In Bedtime Stories the pain of this artistic limbo is written all over Adam Sandler's character, a resentful hotel handyman named Skeeter.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Dec 25, 2008

I was so exhausted by Sandler's rubbery-face-and-funny-voices schtick, that no amount of good-natured moralizing about the importance of family and love was going to have any effect on me.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 25, 2008

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Dec 25, 2008