Too much of everything

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

"Bedtime Story" is a very unusual film in that I actually much preferred the remake, "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels"...and I rarely enjoy remakes. I won't bore you with a lot of details--suffice to say that it's pretty much the same plot but the character played by Marlon Brando is very sexist and crude...much more so and much more of a jerk than the character played by Steve Martin. And, therein lies the problem--he plays such an obvious pig that the film loses the audience. You just cannot believe he's a con man...and a successful one at that. Overall, an interesting idea that only is modestly interesting...at best. Stick with the 1988 film...your brain will thank you.

Bedtime Story is a fine comedy with two superb actors. The story, the rhythm of the movie and the acting is characteristic of the best period of the English, American, Italian and French comedy. No special effects, just a good story and good acting. Excellent!. Good comedies in the fifties, sixties and seventies were common, Bedtime Story is one, Prudence and the Pill, The Pink Panther, How to Murder Your Wife, The Statue, The Ladykillers, etc… I do not like re-makes in general, but I hate bad re-makes. The bad news is that the list of re-makes is growing. Is it because they lack creativity and ingenuity? Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a really bad one. I wonder why Steve Martin keeps trying to show the world how lousy actor and worse comedian he is compared to Brando or Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther. The same for the 2004 version of The Ladykillers, it is awful. So, my recommendation is: stick to the originals.

'Bedtime Story' is the earlier movie that 'inspired' the more recent 'Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels.' I say inspired because, although most characters are the same, and the predominant story line is the same, including many identical scenes, the two movies end quite differently. Enough so to make them different movies, instead of the latter being a remake.I enjoyed 'Bedtime Story', but I strongly prefer 'Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels', which has come to be my all-time favorite comedy. I will watch it over and over, but one viewing of 'Bedtime Story' is enough for me. I never liked Brando as an actor, his delivery of lines, which sounds to me like a speech impediment, is distracting. I only liked him in the 'Godfather' movies, where he was the perfect choice.I also thought the 'Rupreckt' sub-character was played much better by Steve Martin, who is clearly better than Brando ever could be in this type of role. Niven is perfect here, even better than Michael Caine, and I love Shirley Jones (Janet Walker, not Colgate) in anything, but they are not enough to bring this marginal comedy any higher than '7' of 10. Plus, 'Bedtime Story' was obviously filmed on a set, with filmed scenes of Germany and southern France shown in the background. In contrast, 'Scoundrels' was filmed in France, which makes it a much more authentic movie.MAJOR SPOILER FOLLOWS - In 'Bedtime Story' a telegram back to Janet exposes the hoax, but she doesn't know Freddie is involved, so marries him, with Freddie moving back to the States to work in the soap factory, while Niven's character is tracking down a new target. In 'Scoundrels', it turns out that Janet has scammed both of them, disappears, and turns up later, with a group of investors, looking for help from the boys to work this real estate scam.

If you saw Stanley Shapiro's other movies you will notice that this is a variation on the same theme. But it's still enjoyable. This movie could be considered very misogynous if it weren't so misanthropic. Unlike previous Shapiro productions, in this one, women are described as the stronger gender, but depicted as almost another species, gullible beyond belief. In previous films women were smooth operators in their own right. But the comparative paleness of one gender in this one, is probably the result of so much time being devoted to tarring and feathering the other gender. Shapiro is the master of compassionate cynicism. Niven's character is just preposterously wonderful: an urbane, slightly world-weary crook who has really "arrived" and whose exquisite taste prompts him to be a patron of the vanishing arts and crafts! Brando's is upstart, uncouth vulgarity personified. There may be geopolitical implications here. The happy ending is of course, obligatorily contrived, something out of "The Tender Trap", to satisfy the censors. This is a most delightful farce for connoisseurs. I haven't seen the remake, but can it be better than this?