Click

When a movie tries to be too many things to too many people, it tends to become confused about what it's trying to be. This is the problem at the very core of Click, a sometimes amusing, but often messy and frustrating mix of star Adam Sandler's different film styles. The movie is one part crude frat boy comedy, with plenty of sexual humor and fart jokes that make the movie far too inappropriate for the small children who were in my audience, one part whimsical fantasy (the movie's plot owes a large debt to It's a Wonderful Life, and the climax stops just short of having Sandler's character running down the street wishing everyone Merry Christmas), and another part depressing morality drama that will probably leave some audiences confused by the sudden shift of tone from laughs to tragedy. Much like The Break Up, Click has been advertised as a featherweight and fun comedy, but there is a very serious, downbeat, and sad undercurrent to the story. The film deals too much with death and loss to make it appropriate for the family audience that the ad campaign seems to be aiming for. There are some creative ideas, and some scenes that genuinely work, but they are surrounded by scenes that either don't work or don't flow together into a coherent film-going experience.

Overstressed and overworked architect father, Michael Newman (Adam Sandler), is practically killing himself to give his family a better life, not knowing that by doing so he is alienating the family in the process. He lives on a diet of Twinkies and french fries to keep up his energy, stays up to the odd hours of the morning making designs in the hopes that his smarmy boss (David Hasselhoff) will notice him and make him a partner, and is constantly trying to please everyone in his life without taking the time to please himself or stop and notice his loved ones. His loving wife Donna (Kate Beckinsale) tries to be supportive, but she is growing concerned, fearing that her husband is working himself sick as evidenced by his telltale coughing fits. Michael's frantic life takes a sudden turn one fateful night when he enters a Bed, Bath, and Beyond in the hopes that they carry a universal remote so he can control all the objects in his house with one device. He finds a mysterious door labeled "Way Beyond" in the back of the store, and stepping through it, discovers the work room of the mysterious Morty (Christopher Walken).

Morty realizes Michael's problem, and offers him a universal remote that can literally control the universe, giving Michael complete control over his life. He can fast forward moments he doesn't want to sit through, he can rewind to relive his favorite memories, and he can even stop time complete with a push of the remote's "pause" button. With the help of the many functions of the remote, Michael is able to quickly work his way up the corporate ladder. However, what he does not realize is that by skipping past certain family events, he winds up alienating them completely. He soon finds that he has no control of his life whatsoever, as the remote automatically fast forwards through certain moments of his life due to its built in Tivo-like function that remembers the kind of moments that Michael fast forwarded through in the past. Time races forward out of control, and before he knows it, he has lost everything he once had, and has missed out on his entire life.

Click certainly has an interesting premise, and the entire time I was watching it, I kept on wondering what this movie would have been like if someone like Charlie Kaufman (the writer of such quirky comedy dramas like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) had been behind it. The movie does have a couple of very creative gags, such as the remote's "menu" button which brings up a literal DVD menu of Michael's life where he can watch a "making of" feature (the night his parents had sex and conceived him) and even an optional commentary where an off camera James Earl Jones narrates the events in Michael's life. Unfortunately, most of the jokes in Click aim for the youngest of Sandler's fans, or those who are nostalgic for his Billy Madison days. The film's humor is chalk full of farts, dogs humping, sexual body humor, and just plain mean-spiritedness. There's a character in the film played by Sean Astin whom Sandler hates, and so he constantly uses the remote to humiliate and/or abuse him. (He pauses time and kicks Astin's character in the privates repeatedly so that when time is restored, the guy is doubled over in agony.) The problem is, Astin's character does not deserve the treatment, as he never does anything wrong to Michael. The movie tries to give us an excuse for Michael's actions, but it doesn't work because the situation in question is his fault to begin with. So the fact that he is constantly using the remote to beat up on him comes across more as sadistic rather than funny.

With the movie being so juvenile and crude for most of its running time, it's downright confusing when the movie shifts gears and suddenly turns into a tear-jerking drama during the film's final 40 minutes. The funny thing is, this is where the movie works the best, and it almost makes you wish that director Frank Coraci (The Waterboy) and writers Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe had just dropped the whole pre adolescent humor that carries throughout most of the movie. The drama may be a bit too heavy and calculated at times, but it is also undeniably effective. As the remote starts fast forwarding through Michael's life on its own, he finds himself rapidly aging and losing everything, from his family to his friends. He doesn't remember the events that happened in-between the moments he is transported between, but everyone else does, and it leads to some poignant scenes, such as the moment where Michael is forced to rewind back to the last time he saw his father alive, since he wasn't there when he died. The last half of Click is so depressing and so downbeat that it almost seems like you're watching an entirely different movie. A better movie perhaps, but not one that flows together with everything that's come before it.

It's actually during the second half of the movie that everything starts to come together, including the acting. The way that Adam Sandler plays Michael, he almost seems to have a split personality. One minute he's a kind and caring family man, and the next, he's framing the bully boy next door for smoking cigars laced with pot for no reason whatsoever other than the fact that the kid likes to brag that his family has it better than he does. He's also a guy who likes to pause time so he can fart in people's mouths and ridicule people who have done nothing to hurt or offend him. It's not until the film's second half when he starts to realize his own mistakes that he comes across as even remotely likeable, but the damage has already been done by that point. Kate Beckinsale is sweet and likeable in her role as his understanding wife, but you really can't stop wondering what she sees in him. The rest of the cast is mainly there so Sandler's character can humiliate them with the remote for his own amusement, except for Christopher Walken, who seems to be having a lot of fun playing the role of the bizarre Morty. You know your movie is in trouble when Walken is doing his usual bizarre act, and he comes across as being more relatable than the "normal" main character.

Click plays like a movie that lost its way somewhere during the writing process, because no one knew which tone they wanted to take, so they just decided to throw a little bit of everything. There's some good ideas and a couple good laughs to be had, but the movie just never quite comes together as a whole. I almost wish I had a magical remote of my own so they could go back in time and give the script another couple rewrites. I personally think the movie will have a hard time finding an audience, as the first half seems to play to die-hard Sandler fans (even including the prerequisite Rob Schneider cameo where he talks in a goofy voice), while the second half aims for the more serious minded viewer. You can't have it both ways, and because it tries to, Click ultimately fails.

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