Bedtime Stories, The Spirit and Marley & Me among new DVD reviews 

BEDTIME STORIES (2008). A winning formula for a successful family film gets reconfigured employing the lowest common denominator, and the result is a dismal effort that will fail with all but the most undemanding of children. As for their parents, it's hard to imagine any of them warming up to a picture in which Adam Sandler, as lowly handyman Skeeter Bronson, bonds with his niece and nephew by telling them that he'll always be around "like the stink on feet." Certainly, there's an unpleasant odor emanating from just about every scene in this slapdash comedy, in which the aforementioned Skeeter learns that portions of the bedtime stories he spins to his sister's (Courteney Cox) kids have a magical way of coming true. He hopes that these fantasy yarns will somehow allow him to ascend to the position of hotel manager, but for now, the tall tales result in him getting bombarded by a shower of gumballs and kicked in the shins by an angry dwarf. The tragedy of Bedtime Stories is that several noteworthy performers find themselves whoring their talents simply to play second banana to a somnambular Sandler – among the wasted are Guy Pearce, Keri Russell, Jonathan Pryce and Lucy Lawless. The most memorable supporting characters turn out to be Bugsy, a CGI-assisted guinea pig with saucer-sized eyes, and a Native American chief (Rob Schneider) who waves his hand behind his butt as he discusses "fire and wind" (get it?). Unfortunately, they're memorable in the worst way – as symbols of a potentially interesting movie that comes crashing down as hard as that proverbial beanstalk.

DVD extras include 12 deleted or extended scenes; two making-of featurettes; outtakes; and a piece on Bugsy the guinea pig.

Movie: *1/2

Extras: **

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (2008). The 1951 version still holds up beautifully as a science fiction classic, but I'll refrain from taking the usual route of using a cherished original to bludgeon a shoddy remake to death. In the case of the new Day, there's no need: The film mostly fails on its own terms. This feels less like a remake of that '50s gem than a companion piece to An Inconvenient Truth – the difference is that Al Gore was a lot more fun to watch than Keanu Reeves, who's so stiff here that you fear rigor mortis will set in before the movie wraps. Reeves plays Klaatu, an alien who arrives on Earth with the intention of – what exactly? Initially, he asks to speak to our planet's leaders (as the original's Klaatu did), presumably to provide them with an ultimatum: Shape up or face the dire consequences. But the next minute, he's already settled on wiping out the human race, because all he knows about us is that we love war and violence and death. It actually comes as a shock to him that humans, as repped by sympathetic scientist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) and her stepson Jacob (an annoyingly self-conscious Jaden Smith), are capable of love and affection and devotion. I dunno, you'd think a visitor from a far advanced civilization would have done a little bit of intergalactic homework before stopping by – at least a cursory glance through the best-selling Earthling Traits for Dummies or something. This inconsequential production strives to seem important by addressing humankind's destruction of our natural resources and intrinsic need to pollute the planet – and yet one of the movie's key scenes is set inside a McDonald's. Nice.

The three-disc special edition includes a copy of the 1951 original as well as a digital copy of the '08 model for portable media players. (My advice: Keep the '51 disc and use the other two for coasters.) Extras include audio commentary by screenwriter David Scarpa; three deleted scenes; a half-hour making-of featurette; a piece on the search for extraterrestrial life; and still galleries.

Movie: *1/2

Extras: **1/2

DOUBT (2008). While Ron Howard managed to transform Frost/Nixon into a living, breathing motion picture, writer-director John Patrick Shanley never quite made it past the curtain call with Doubt. Adapting his own Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Shanley doesn't possess Howard's cinematic instincts, resulting in a movie that remains resolutely stage-bound. But that's not necessarily a sign of defeat: No one could ever really argue that Mike Nichols' superb Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? managed to shuck the playhouse chains, either. Doubt is no Woolf, of course, but blessed with a quartet of strong performances, it's weighty enough to earn its rightful place on DVD shelves. Set in 1964, the film examines a battle of wills taking place at St. Nicholas in the Bronx. Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), the strict principal of the school, isn't crazy about Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), whose desire for a more progressive direction within the Catholic church flies in the face of her old-school ideology. So when timid Sister James (Amy Adams) airs her suspicions that Father Flynn is being a bit too chummy with an altar boy, Sister Aloysius works on getting him ousted. But is she truly convinced of his guilt, or is she merely using the issue as a way to force out the theological thorn in her side? Pulitzer notwithstanding, Shanley's play was disappointing in the manner in which it took the obvious way out. The movie can't overcome that hurdle, though it can be argued that Shanley adds an extra layer of ambiguity to the proceedings. Still, what really matters is the cast, and there's no doubt that Streep, Hoffman, Adams and Viola Davis (as the mother of the allegedly molested student) do heavenly work. All four received Oscar nominations, as did Shanley for his screenplay.

DVD extras include audio commentary by Shanley; a making-of piece; an interview session with the four principals; a discussion of Howard Shore's score; and a piece on the real-life nuns who Shanley interviewed before making the movie.

Movie: ***

Extras: ***

MARLEY & ME (2008). Even given my status as a big dog lover (and whether you take that to mean a big lover of dogs or a lover of big dogs, either interpretation works), the notion of spending two hours watching puppies frolic during the course of Marley & Me initially seemed like a pretty one-note way to spend a matinee. Welcome, then, to one of last winter's most pleasant surprises (and a major box office hit), as this family film proves to be far more thematically rich than most expected. Working under director David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada), major-league screenwriter Scott Frank (Minority Report, Get Shorty) and middle-league screenwriter Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex) adapted John Grogan's fact-based novel about his family's pet, a Labrador retriever named Marley. Both journalists, John (Owen Wilson) and wife Jennifer (Jennifer Aniston) agree that Marley is "the world's worst dog," given his penchant for always getting into trouble. But thankfully, the movie doesn't devolve into a series of comic scenes revolving around leg humpings and yard droppings. Instead, as John and Jennifer add some children to the equation, it becomes a clear-eyed look at the difficulties in raising a family, all the more so when there's a lumbering beast driving everyone mad. Ultimately, though, the film makes a point that every dog owner – indeed, every pet owner – long ago took as gospel: A family doesn't begin and end with merely its two-legged members. Alternately sweet, sad and sentimental, Marley & Me represents cinema as dog's best friend.

DVD extras in the single-disc edition consist of five deleted scenes and a gag reel. A two-disc "Bad Dog" edition is also available.

Movie: ***

Extras: **

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (2008). I'm not sure how a film in which a small boy gets blinded by someone deliberately pouring hot liquid onto his eyeballs while he's unconscious ends up being hyped as the "feel-good" movie of the year, but that's the story with Slumdog Millionaire, the sleeper hit that ended up winning eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture). The modern-day sequences find lanky, likable Jamal (Dev Patel) working his way through the questions on India's version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Jamal has coped with poverty all of his life, and it's his unlikely ascension that has the entire nation rooting for him. But Jamal isn't doing this for money; he's doing it for the love of beautiful Latika (Freida Pinto), who, as we see in ample flashbacks, grew up on the streets alongside Jamal and his hotheaded brother Salim (Madhur Mittal). Initially, the movie's structure is ingenious in how it feeds on incidents from Jamal's past to allow him to get the right answers on the TV game show, in effect suggesting that what's most important in this life is what we learn firsthand. As for the sequences revolving around the characters' rough childhoods, they're refreshingly raw and uncompromising, a cross between Charles Dickens and City of God. It's a shame, then, that director Danny Boyle and scripter Simon Beaufoy toss aside all innovation in order to bind the final half-hour into a straightjacket of rigid formula plotting. The boy-finds-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-tries-to-save-girl angle is flaccid enough, although it's the arc involving bad bro Salim that's especially groan-worthy. Still, three-quarters of a stellar movie is nothing to sneer at, meaning that most of those who take a chance on the film will come away feeling like a million bucks.

DVD extras include audio commentary by Boyle and Patel; separate audio commentary by Beaufoy and producer Christian Colson; 12 deleted scenes; and a 23-minute making-of piece.

Movie: ***

Extras: **1/2

THE SPIRIT (2008). If looks could kill, The Spirit, an adaptation of Will Eisner's seminal comic strip, would eliminate every viewer who feeds it into the DVD player. Its eye-popping visual template mirrors that of Sin City, with its graphic stylistics lending a crisp, cool look to its tale of a masked hero who has returned from the grave to fight the evildoers who threaten the city he loves. But in this case, eye candy is hardly enough to compensate for the rest of this 10-ton turkey that fails on every other conceivable level. Eisner's comic legacy deserved far better than this wretched camp outing, a film in which every jokey, self-aware remark lands with the force of an atomic bomb laying waste to a sand castle. The plot finds The Spirit (dull-as-dirt Gabriel Macht) facing off against his perennial nemesis The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson), a madman who's intent on acquiring a potion that will render him immortal. Jackson, whose performance might have been the worst of 2008 (and remember, I saw Mike Myers in The Love Guru), has already guaranteed that his name will live forever in the annals of grotesque overacting. His demeaning turn here is embarrassing, with writer-director Frank Miller accommodating him via some horrendous dialogue and situations. Jackson even gets to dress up like a Nazi officer in one scene – why, I couldn't tell you. In their first battle, The Octopus smashes a toilet over The Spirit's head, laughs maniacally, and declares, "Toilets are always funny!" This movie would know: It clearly deserves to be flushed down one.

Extras in the two-disc special edition include audio commentary by Miller and producer Deborah Del Prete; a making-of piece; and the 16-minute featurette "Miller on Miller," in which the comic book legend-cum-filmmaker discusses his influences.

Movie: *

Extras: **1/2