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Audiences know what they’re getting with the annual Big Disney Christmas Movie: heroic kids, evil adults, and a bumbling hero caught somewhere in between. This year’s chump is Adam Sandler, essaying his usual bipolar man-child schtick as Skeeter Bronson, the handyman at a grand hotel built on the site of the Mom ’n’ Pop motel where he grew up, who is nonplussed when the tales he concocts for his niece and nephew begin to have eerie parallels in real life.
‘Bedtime Stories’ starts well, with Sandler’s naturally acerbic persona and wilfully erratic turns from Guy Pearce and Russell Brand serving to offset the script’s more schmaltzy moments. But it descends into pathos, undermined by an insipid romantic subplot and the usual platitudinous guff about self-belief. Insult is added to injury by a series of reactionary, misinformed anti-eco gags and a distressing but inevitable cameo from Rob Schneider as a Native American.