Bedtime Stories: Sandler's Back

Guy Pearce thinks Bedtime Stories will be more than a sleeper hit. Pearce (The Time Machine), who co-stars with Adam Sandler in the upcoming family fantasy, told SCI FI Wire that Bedtime Stories is a return to form for the funnyman.

"It's, I think, Adam getting back to [being] the star that people ... grew to love," Pearce said in an interview while promoting his latest film, Traitor. "Bedtime Stories is a very family-oriented film. He plays a maintenance guy at this hotel and really wishes that he could move up in the world and take my place, and I'm the manager of the hotel."

Bedtime Stories finds Sandler's character, Skeeter, taking care of his sister's kids for a while. In the process of telling them bedtime stories at night, figures from Skeeter's real life not only appear in the tales, but the tales also become true. Skeeter then manipulates the stories to improve his lot, to get the girl and the better job, etc.

"So I play almost his nemesis," Pearce said. "I play the manager, this idiotic, egotistical twit who just thinks he's too good for anybody. And when Sandler tells the various stories he gets to have the better outcome than me in every one of those stories. Each time he tells a story, it's in a different setting. So one will be in outer space, and one is in medieval times, and one is in ancient Greece, and each time there will be some scenario set up where he and I have to sort of battle it out. So it's a lot of fun. I mean, it's a real family film, a Disney film."

Bedtime Stories, which also stars Courteney Cox and Keri Russell, opens on Dec. 25.

-Ian Spelling