'Bedtime Stories' snores

Perhaps the biggest bonus for “Bedtime Stories” is that is a PG movie geared toward families. I think that was the idea for the movie—considering its holiday release. However, that’s where the kudos essentially stop for this latest film from Adam Sandler.

“Bedtime Stories” stars Sandler as Skeeter a hotel maintenance man who is still a kid at heart. Kerri Russell is a school teacher and Courtney Cox as Skeeter’s sister and the single mother of three.

The basic plot reads as follows: Skeeter has to take care of his niece and nephew while his sister interviews for a job in Arizona. At night he reads them stories that come to life the next morning. The subplot is that the hotel he works for is run by an evil guy (Guy Pearce) with a cast of characters (Lucy Lawless) who are out to get Skeeter. Somewhere along the way, I’m sure there’s a moral to the story but it’s lost in the bad acting, bad writing, and bad directing.

STOP RIGHT THERE.

The movie is, to put it bluntly, not funny. There wasn’t a moment when I actually laughed more than a minor chuckle. Lined up with solid talent with Lucy Lawless (“Xena”, “Battlestar Galactica”) and Guy Pearce (“Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert”), you’d think the movie would be a laugh a minute. Somewhere the laughter got lost in translation from page to screen. It could have been the actors too. Lawless and Pierce weren’t nearly as funny as they could have been if they had the right material to deliver on screen.

It was hard to stay focused when watching the film. I like Sandler as an actor. His early movies are some of this best work. “Happy Gilmore” was a work of genius and “Waterboy” was one of those inspirational stories hidden inside of comedy film.

After his performance in “Punch Drunk Love” it’s hard to stomach “Bedtime Stories.”
Perhaps my type of comedy is weird sort. I don’t like modern comedies, but I like the crazy comedies from the 60s, 70s, and 80s with some 90s and 2000s stuff thrown into the mix. But “Bedtime Stories” tries hard to be a comedy story for the family.

Gone are the days of when Walt Disney had his hand in all the productions. It is apparent that Disney continues to struggle with live action without Uncle Walt’s guiding hand. “Bedtime” definitely could have benefitted from child-like guidance. He knew what audiences wanted and more importantly he knew how to make a kid comedy appealing to the kid in adults as well. The main was a genius when it came to filmmaking.

I take what I said in the beginning back—the biggest bonus is that I got see this movie free. I would have been mad if my hard-earned $5 went to waste on this movie.

I’m sure the Lawless fans will eat this up as a work of genius.

And I’m sure I’ll catch flack for the following: The woman could read the New York City phone directory and mispronounce all the names and her fans would still give her a solid performance. I on the other hand, found her completely unfunny and her crawling around on all fours made me want to hurl in the over-buttered, over-salted popcorn bag! But I think that was more of how bad the story was… I don’t know. I’m just glad that even the luke-warm “Valkyrie” softened the blow of the bad movie experience of Christmas 2008.

“Bedtime Stories” is a solid D.

No thrill in Ark

The story of Noah’s Ark is one of those stories that just never seem to die. Even the entertainment industry has taken its turn on making movies about Noah’s Ark. Unlike those movies, Monster Ark sets up the premise that after Noah saved two of each kind animal, God had one more job for him to do—lock up the ‘darkness’ that aims to eat away at the soul of mankind.

Interested yet?

If you’re thinking that Monster Ark (I felt the original title of Genesis Code works better) is some deep look into the mystery of the fabled Ark, look elsewhere. This movie isn’t that type of movie.

Monster Ark is about a team of archeologists who find the lost scroll from the Book of Genesis. The scroll gives a detailed account of Noah’s second mission for god.

The lovely archeologist, Ava, played by Xena’s Renee O’Connor channels a character from her own television series in this film. O’Connor herself gives the role some life. But the dialogue she is seemingly given is flat. Her fans might expect her to jump out at any moment and reveal she’s a descendent of Gabrielle (her character from the show).

Tim DeKay plays, Nick, her ex-husband who fits the typical archeologist stereotype of the must-find-the-treasure-at-any-costs perfectly. He lacks a belief in god. This serves as a basis of many of Ava and Nick’s arguments that pop up throughout the movie.

Rounding out the team of archeologists are graduate students Russell (Bill Parks) and Joanna (Amanda Crew). Russell is your typical geek student and Joanna is the true archeologist of the two.

The cast of characters also includes a platoon of US Army soldiers that wouldn’t last two minutes in the real Iraq if they behaved and acted like the way they did in the movie. The soldiers reminded me of a bunch of John Wayne-wanna-be-soldiers. The Major Gentry, played by Tommy Lister (who ironically is in a movie about Noah’s Ark—an animated film), gives the movie some of its humor with his shoot everything up attitude.

Of course, an evil secret can’t be kept without a secret order of men who are destined to protect it. (Sounds like The Mummy’s Maji!) The foot soldier, Belus (Carlos Leon), completes this déjà vu of a Maji because he looks, dresses and acts almost like Ardeth Bay (Oded Fehr) from The Mummy.

I can’t forget about the monster. One of the things I kept thinking to myself when watching this film was that the monster reminded me of Graegus, Ares’ dog from the Hercules episode “Unchained Heart.”

Over the course of the next two hours, the audience is greeted to some stale dialogue and the plot that seems to have been ripped from nearly every popular archeology movie over the last thirty years. This includes direct rips from the Indiana Jones movies with hidden chambers, booby-trapped chambers and the cute little staff in the hole to reveal the shadow that leads to the location trick.

Been there, done that. Really old. Find something new.

Aside from the channeling of Indiana Jones and The Mummy, the movie doesn’t have a whole lot to offer in terms of plot. The plot of itself brings out a stereotypical archeologist who wants that big find to put him on the map—he wants to accomplish what no other has before him—find the last of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The monster of darkness scenario didn’t seem to install a sense of fear that the world was going to end. It just ran around slashing Al Qaeda operatives and innocent villagers up. The story never quite got there of telling the viewers that because this evil was unleashed, the world was doomed.

Ava and Nick are believable enough. However, it seems to me like I’ve seen this relationship before—ah yes, Twister. In the movie Twister, Jo and Bill are divorced weather scientists. Jo (Helen Hunt) is the gung-ho scientist who flies into in a situation while Bill (Bill Paxton) is the more reserved, more cautious type. They fought too—not about religion—but the principle is the same. It’s quite obvious that the two still loved each other. Same thing with Ava and Nick they loved each other and if there was a sequel, they’d probably be married again.

All of the characters fitted into their assigned roles: the devil-may-care archeologist, the “I’m in it for the science” archeologist, the bumbling archeology student and the archeology student who wants to learn more, the gung-ho soldiers who run around screaming for most of the movie, and the secret order of protectors who can’t protect their secret.

Dialogue seems to be the next key of the movie’s failure. It was a flat in a lot of places. O’Connor’s character had more lines than her previous Sci-Fi flick (Alien Apocalypse), but her lines often came across as flat and unmoving. The same with the rest of the characters—their dialogue didn’t quite hit the mark. With the soldiers running around screaming and the major (aka Big Dude) yelling incomprehensibly at his soldiers—it’s hard to find anything worthwhile.

Monster Ark fits nicely into Sci-Fi’s Saturday night show of cheesy monster flicks. It’s neither here nor there. I can’t say it’s one of their better ones. It’s definitely better than Alien Apocalypse, which just plain sucked. If Sci-Fi Channel were to make a serious movie about anything—I’d be shocked.

When it comes right down to it, I didn’t find Monster Ark any more entertaining than say any other ordinary Saturday night monster flick they put out. The monster wasn’t scary and the premise didn’t seem install a sense of fear into the viewer. I’ll give this movie a solid C.

Renee’s performance was good (given the material she had to deliver), but I kept thinking a descendent of Gabrielle throughout the film—and that’s not a good thing.