It's Bugsy!

It’s supposed to be May, but nobody has told the weather. An arctic wind is stripping the blossom off the apple tree and the rain and hail are taking it in turns to throw themselves violently at the windows.

So it’s Saturday morning and we’ve already had one lot of “Muuuuum! I’m bored!” To which the only sensible reply is: “So am I!” Luckily the postman saves us with a package of Blu-ray discs to put into the new player which is sitting smugly under the television looking very pleased with itself indeed. It knows it is clever and it knows We Like It.

These are all Disney Blu-ray discs for me to review as Blu-ray Ambassador for Think Parents Network. H7 and R5 pounce first on new release Bedtime Stories.

This stars Adam Sandler as Skeeter Bronson who babysits for his sister Wendy (Courtney Cox) while she travels to a job interview. At bedtime the children demand a story and Skeeter lets his imagination run wild as he conjures up fantastic tales of heroes, action, cowboys and romance, while the children spice it up with details of their own. Raining gum balls, for example. But Skeeter soon discovers that the tales are coming to life in his job as hotel handyman. 

 

Brian and I spent the first ten minutes saying: “Hey! Isn’t that thing from thing?” (and, later on: “Good grief that’s Russell Brand in a coconut bikini and grass skirt!” No, really.). H7 and R5 meanwhile screamed with laughter at Bugsy the bug-eyed guinea pig (and that was only the Menu page).

Bedtime Stories is one of those films which has many levels. R5 was riveted every time the guinea pig was on-screen, but was a little bored by some parts of the film, missing the intricacies of the plot involving the hotel and the power struggle. H7, another guinea pig-lover, also liked the stories and the story and fantasy clips. Both enjoyed the burgeoning romance between Skeeter and his sister’s friend Jill.

Of course it has a happy ending, and of course there’s nothing new in the plot, which is, after all, based on fairy tales. That’s all as it should be. But we were entertained from beginning to end. Yes, there are some bits of slap-stick which we just didn’t find funny, but that was maybe twice in the entire film. Brand was funny, if incongruous, Richard Griffiths was a delight as hotel-impresario Nottingham, and Guy Pearce was perfectly cast as the smarmy hotel manager.

Blu-ray discs have a colossal capacity for extras. There aren't too many of them on this disc, though, but what there is doesn't don’t disappoint. The bloopers are some of the funniest I have ever seen and there’s an interesting bit on how some of the special effects were done, but my children passed on that as they were keen to see “It’s Bugsy”, a profile of the guinea pig. There’s a nice short film with the child actors too, called “To All the Little People”, which raised some interest, but again my own ‘Little People’ were desperate to get back to the menu page to watch Bugsy dance.

It was a great film for a rainy May Saturday afternoon. The star of the show? Well, in this household, it's Bugsy.