Bedtime Stories (2008)

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General		Extras
Category	Family	Main Menu Audio & Animation Featurette-3 Outtakes Deleted Scenes
Rating
Year Of Production	2008
Running Time	95:14
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Adam Shankman
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Adam Sandler Keri Russell Guy Pearce Russell Brand Richard Griffiths Teresa Palmer Lucy Lawless Courteney Cox
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	Rupert Gregson-Williams

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Descriptive Audio Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Polish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Czech Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Hungarian Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Russian Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Polish Czech Hungarian Russian Slovak Hebrew Ukranian Latvian Lithuanian Estonian Polish Titling Czech Titling Hungarian Titling Russian Titling	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     I generally avoid Adam Sandler movies because I find him to be mostly unfunny and more than slightly annoying. However, as this one seemed to be more family oriented than nearly all his other movies I decided to give it a go. Once again, I think it only fair to point out that the trailer for this movie somewhat misrepresents it as when I saw the trailer I thought this was very much a film for the youngest filmgoing audience (4-8) as it had cute animals and lots of fast moving, fun action scenes of the bedtime stories. In reality this movie is probably more for the pre-teen and young teen audience (8-12) as it is more focused on the relationships and the romance aspects of the story rather than actually focusing on the bedtime stories themselves. This is not to say that younger viewers will not enjoy some aspects of this film but they will not respond well to the lack of pace especially early on. My six year old was interested, however my four year old turned off very quickly. None of this is to say that this is not a film with merit but rather that it was advertised in a way that made it seem to me like a different film than it was.

    The story concerns Skeeter Bronson (Adam Sandler) a typical lovable loser who is the maintenance man at a major hotel. The hotel has been built on the site of a small hotel which used to be owned by his father, Martin (Jonathan Pryce). Years before Martin had started the hotel but as he was not a great businessman he ended up having to sell out to Barry Nottingham (Richard Griffiths). Nottingham went on to build a large chain of hotels including the one where Skeeter now works. Part of the deal Barry made with Martin was that Skeeter would be the manager of the hotel once it was built. Of course, Barry has not kept his word. The manager of the hotel is Kendall Duncan (a very hammy Guy Pearce) who is also marrying Barry's daughter Violet.

    Meanwhile, Skeeter's sister Wendy (Courtney Cox) asks Skeeter to look after her kids for a week with the assistance of her friend Jill (Keri Russell). Wendy is heavily into organic food and does not let her kids watch TV, whereas Skeeter is pretty much her direct opposite. Skeeter also has no experience with kids and resorts to telling them bedtime stories to keep them happy, like his father used to do. This works OK for a while, however, the stories start becoming real, especially the bits made up by the kids. Despite her initial dislike of him, Skeeter and Jill start to develop a relationship. Can Skeeter get his dream job and the girl? Well, I think you can probably guess.

   Also appearing in smaller parts are Lucy Lawless and comedians Rob Schneider and Russell Brand. The kids will also enjoy Bugsy the guinea pig who features on the menus. He was pretty much the only element except the space fight which got my four year old's interest.

    Despite what I said above about the way this film was marketed, it is quite an enjoyable family romantic comedy which is certainly suitable for most audiences. It is quite fun and the humour avoids anything puerile. It is certainly not the greatest film ever made, however, it is a low key and entertaining family film.

Video

    The video quality is excellent.

    The feature is presented in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, 16x9 enhanced which is the original aspect ratio.

    The picture was sharp and clear throughout. Shadow detail is also very good.

    The colour was very vibrant accentuating the bedtime stories which are full of bold colours.

    There were no noticeable artefacts.

    There are subtitles in English, English for the hearing impaired and 10 other European languages. There are also captions for the foreign language dubs. They were clear and easy to read.

    There is no noticeable layer change during the feature.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio quality is very good but doesn't really show off your system.

    This DVD contains six audio options, an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack encoded at 448 Kb/s, an English Dolby Digital 2.0 Audio Descriptive soundtrack encoded at 192 Kb/s, a Polish 2.0 soundtrack encoded at 192 Kb/s and Dolby Digital 5.1 dubs in Czech, Hungarian & Russian all encoded at 384 Kb/s.

    Dialogue was very easy to understand and clear.

    The score is by Rupert Gregson-Williams and suits the film well without being spectacular.

    The surround speakers were really only used for music and atmosphere and some occasional directional effects.

    The subwoofer was used for music and an occasional thump.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is cute featuring the guinea pig dancing. This disc is Fast Play enabled but only after you select a language.

Until Gravity do us Part (3:51)

    Short featurette on how the space fight scene was put together including the extensive CGI and Guy Pearce getting hit.

To all the Little People (3:51)

    Featurette on the kids in the cast. They talk about their characters and everyone else says how great they are. Yawn!

It's Bugsy (3:33)

    Featurette on animal actors who play Bugsy.

Laughter is Contagious : Outtakes (6:32)

    More behind the scenes footage than actual goofs. Regardless it is tedious.

Cutting Room Floor : Deleted Scenes (10:20)

    12 scenes mostly extended versions of things in the film. They do not add much and mostly feature bad jokes.

    The Region 1 release is the same except for the language and subtitle options plus a Blu-ray promo called Dylan and Cole Sprouse: Blu-Ray Is Suite!. Draw. This title is also available on Blu-ray.

    The video quality is excellent.

    The audio quality is very good.

    A very ordinary selection of extras in quality terms.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall