Adam Sandler is at that difficult age. Now 42, he’s too old to continue with the bungling, man-child shtick of yore, yet too young to transition to old-fogey infantilism. In Bedtime Stories the pain of this artistic limbo is written all over his character, a resentful hotel handyman named Skeeter. Astonishingly, his name is not the source of his umbrage.
Skeeter’s pique (though he may not know it) is reserved for his dead father, an inept businessman whose cozy motel once occupied the lot where Skeeter’s current employer has erected an upscale resort. Gone, along with the homespun vibe, is Skeeter’s dream of one day running the property; so when his divorced sister, Wendy (a frighteningly taut Courteney Cox), asks him to baby-sit for his young niece and nephew (Laura Ann Kesling and Jonathan Morgan Heit) for a few days, Skeeter is in no mood to play scallywag uncle.
“I don’t believe in happy endings,” he tells his incredulous charges when story time comes around. Luckily for the tykes, their director, Adam Shankman, loves them, the happier the better. (Even as a guest judge on So You Think You Can Dance Shankman, a popular choreographer, squirmed mightily to avoid delivering a bad critique.)
Rolling up his sleeves and piling on the digital effects, he labors to whip life into a screenplay (by Matt Lopez and Tim Herlihy) so tired even Bugsy, the children’s pop-eyed guinea pig, is moved to tuck himself into bed.
But Shankman is not one to give up without a fight. And as the children concoct their own stories, Skeeter and the rest of the cast are dragged through a variety of threadbare fantasies — an Old West showdown, a medieval joust, a chariot race in ancient Greece — in which Skeeter inevitably bests the villain and bags the girl. The adorable Keri Russell, as the unfortunate target of Skeeter’s passive-aggressive affections, is the movie’s soft center and sole pleasure: a locus of calm in a sea of turmoil.
Faring less well are performers whose tenure in children’s entertainment will, I hope, be brief, including Lucy Lawless as a brittle desk clerk and Russell Brand as Skeeter’s fuzzily written best friend. And if there were an Oscar for miscasting, Guy Pearce’s atrocious turn as the hotel’s pompous manager would be a lock. Mugging beneath a horrendous coif, he makes Basil Fawlty look like a paragon of restraint.
Almost everyone leaves blood on the floor, but Bedtime Stories refuses to be juiced; soured by its enervated star and uninspired writing, the movie offers only tiny moments of joy, like a hailstorm of gumballs that’s unexpectedly magical.
Clearly, pushing Skeeter’s broom doesn’t agree with Sandler, who seems impatient with immaturity and anxious to grow up. He was much happier selling novelty toilet plungers in Punch-Drunk Love, but the director of that movie, Paul Thomas Anderson, recognized his star’s natural inner rage and how to tap into it, encouraging a revelatory performance unlike anything on his resume.
If Sandler hopes to shift smoothly into more mature roles (as indicated by last year’s Reign Over Me), he needs directors who understand his uncommon gifts. The toilet plungers are optional.
If you are a Western and especially a white foreign resident of Taiwan, you’ve undoubtedly had the experience of Taiwanese assuming you to be an English teacher. There are cultural and economic reasons for this, but one of the greatest determinants is the narrow range of work permit categories that exist for Taiwan’s foreign residents, which has in turn created an unofficial caste system for foreigners. Until recently, laowai (老外) — the Mandarin term for “foreigners,” which also implies citizenship in a rich, Western country and distinguishable from brown-skinned, southeast Asian migrant laborers, or wailao (外勞) — could only ever
Sept. 23 to Sept. 29 The construction of the Babao Irrigation Canal (八堡圳) was not going well. Large-scale irrigation structures were almost unheard of in Taiwan in 1709, but Shih Shih-pang (施世榜) was determined to divert water from the Jhuoshuei River (濁水溪) to the Changhua plain, where he owned land, to promote wet rice cultivation. According to legend, a mysterious old man only known as Mr. Lin (林先生) appeared and taught Shih how to use woven conical baskets filled with rocks called shigou (石笱) to control water diversion, as well as other techniques such as surveying terrain by observing shadows during
In recent weeks news outlets have been reporting on rising rents. Last year they hit a 27 year high. It seems only a matter of time before they become a serious political issue. Fortunately, there is a whole political party that is laser focused on this issue, the Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP). They could have had a seat or two in the legislature, or at least, be large enough to attract media attention to the rent issue from time to time. Unfortunately, in the last election, Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) acted as a vote sink for
It’s an experience many lovers of the outdoors have reported. Driving or riding through Taiwan’s mountainous interior, pausing to admire and photograph the scenery, they turn their gaze from distant peaks to the slope just below the road — and are appalled to see what locals call a “trash waterfall” (垃圾瀑布). Garbage trucks serve every community in the country, yet sickening quantities of rubbish get heaved into creeks or discarded in woodlands. Sometimes it’s industrial or commercial waste, dumped by business people who don’t want to pay to have it disposed of properly. But much of it is household trash or