A young man, who is a maintenance man for a hotel, dreams some day of becoming the hotel manager and with the help of a little magic his dreams come true. Adam Sandler plays the lead character of Skeeter Bronson. When Skeeter was a young boy, he lived with his father and sister in a hotel. His father was forced to sell the hotel he owned due to money problems, but he made the new owner Barry Nottingham (played by Richard Griffiths) promise to give his boy a chance someday to manage the new hotel as a condition of the sale. Twenty-five years later and Skeeter has worked all that time as the maintenance man for the hotel. Nottingham decides to build a bigger hotel. Skeeter thinks this is finally his chance to become manager, but Nottingham announces he plans to make Kendall (played by Guy Pearce) the new manager instead.
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Skeeter's sister, Wendy (played by Courtney Cox) asks Skeeter to baby-sit her two kids while she is away for a week looking for a new job because the school where she works is being forced to close. She tells him he only needs to watch them at night because one of her other friends, Jill (played by Keri Russell) will handle the daytime. The first exchange Skeeter has with Jill is when he is parked in two spaces and Jill gets mad at him. Skeeter explains, it is the hotel truck and he will get docked pay if he damages it. Jill is still upset having to walk so far because he took up the extra parking space. At first, Skeeter also does not get along very well with Wendy's kids, Bobbi (played by Laura Ann Kesling) and Patrick (played by Jonathan Morgan Heit) because his lifestyle is so different. They are not even allowed to watch television, so to entertain them he makes up stories before they go to sleep.
The stories are a bit strange, because the kids add extra unusual elements in the middle of them such as in one it is raining gumballs. The next day, Skeeter notices that the stories are actually happening in real life, with elements of the story coming true, not exactly as he expects but figuratively, such as the gumballs do rain down but not from the clouds, instead they are falling from a candy truck, which had an accident on the overpass above him. Skeeter tries to take advantage of this magic as wish fulfillment, by adding things in the story such as getting a hundred million dollars that he expects to happen the next day. However, the things he puts in the stories do not happen. He notices it is the things the kids put in the stories that come true. The kids cooperate a bit by putting some of the things he wants in the stories, like he gets a chance to be the hotel manager if he can impress Nottingham with his idea for a theme for the new hotel but the kids also put funny things in the stories like a midget kicking him.
Nottingham does give him a chance to be the manager if he can come up with a better theme than Kendall can. The kids add romance to one of the stories. This makes Jill start to like him. Jill and Skeeter have a nice time on a date. The night before the presentation, when he must give his idea for the hotel theme, the kids make up a crazy story, which has him babbling in an alien tongue, presenting the better theme, winning the job as the new hotel manager, but after he wins being incinerated. At the presentation, his tongue is bit by a bee, so he speaks incoherently. However, his best friend Mickey (played by Russell Brand) is able to understand him and translate for him. He does impress Nottingham with his theme. He is offered the job as the new hotel manager, but when they bring out a flaming birthday cake, he puts out the flames with a fire extinguisher, covering Nottingham in the process, thinking he was going to be incinerated. Instead of being set on fire, he is "fired" which completes the story in a different way.
It turns out the proposed site for the new hotel is the school where both Wendy and Jill work. They are mad at Skeeter for not telling them, but he did not know this. There is a big neighborhood protest to stop the school from being torn down. Skeeter decides to save the day and makes up his own story, which includes him acting like a super hero, stopping the school from being torn down and becoming the new hotel manager, plus winning over Jill as his girlfriend. It is an impossible story, but his belief in this result is enough for him to achieve the almost impossible. It is a happy ending and the school is saved. Jill falls for him. He impresses Nottingham with a better location for the hotel right on the beach, and he is made the new manager so that Nottingham can finally keep his promise he made to Skeeter's father. His rival Kendall becomes the maintenance man of the new hotel with the daily responsibility to clean the cage of the children's bug-eyed guinea pig.
Best part of story, including ending:
It is a cute story with the crazy imagination of the kids creating fantasy magic elements, which are amusing.
Best scene in story:
I like the scene when Skeeter is on the date with Jill and he is about to kiss her. This is when the kids said Abraham Lincoln would suddenly appear so he is on the look out for the President. They are standing under the boardwalk at the beach. Someone drops a penny on his head, with of course Abraham Lincoln on it, breaking the romantic moment. This is a cute way to interject the strange element of Abraham Lincoln into the story.
Opinion about the main character:
Skeeter is a goof-ball, but a nice guy. It is good to see in this film that the nice guy wins in the end.
