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Which is unfortunate, because theaters could really benefit from selling alcohol to the over-21 portion of this film's audience. Put a bar in the back of the theater and suddenly obvious jokes involving the "Pause" and "Fast Forward" buttons might seem really clever. Maybe the last half hour or so of the movie feels poignant. And maybe the irony of spending the last two hours watching a drab, uninspiring movie with the theme of not living one's life on autopilot won't be quite so painful.

The life in question belongs to Michael Newman (Adam Sandler) an architect in a New York firm who works long hours to support his wife Donna (Kate Beckinsale) and kids Ben (Joseph Castanon) and Samantha (Tatum McCann). One night, frustrated by his inability to find the right control for the several remote-controlled devices in his house and already on edge from the usual arguments about almost missing Ben's swim meet and the like, he heads out for some late night shopping, and in the "Way Beyond" section of Bed, Bath & Beyond, he meets Morty (Christopher Walken), who gives him a "universal remote...that controls the universe" But after it learns what Michael will usually fast forward through, it starts skipping longer and longer stretches of Michael's life without prompting.

And once that happens, the movie stops even making an effort at being funny, which is kind of a relief, considering how well it was doing. As near as I can tell, the movie has three jokes that it repeats ad nauseum: The Newman's dog humping a big ol' plush duckie, Michael "pausing" someone he doesn't like and then abusing them in some way that leads to pain or embarrassment upon unpausing, and Christopher Walken acting kind of peculiar. Each is kind of funny once, but once you've seen an example of each, you've kind of seen the whole movie. That David Hasselhoff is able to steal scenes with nothing but a little smarm is more an indictment of the movie than much of a positive reflection on him. Oh, and there's a fat suit. I'm not sure that a guy in a fat suit has ever been funny even when it's convincing, but the one Sandler wears later in the movie is neither.

Of course, comedy isn't the film's only goal. The folks I saw the movie with speculated that Sandler's fans wouldn't like it because it shifts from going for laughs to tugging on heartstrings toward the end, but I disagree: The schmaltz is handled in the same ham-fisted way as the comedy, so if you come out thinking Click is genuinely funny, you may very well find it moving, too. Its brute-force approach to everything even taints the times it finds a nut, blind-squirrel time - there's a pretty nice scene of Michael reviewing the last time he saw his father (Henry Winkler), but it seems to hammer its point just a little too hard by the time it's over. All too often, Walken or some other member of the cast feels the need to prompt the audience with what they're supposed to feel or pick up. That's how we know that Sandler's character is verging into bad father/husband territory - after all, Sandler's audience has been conditioned to find screaming fits funny rather than signs his character is dangerously unhinged. I found that more than a bit annoying because his crime appears to be working too hard to provide for them. Sure, he'd like to spend more time with his family, but the kids are always talking about the things the next door neighbor has, and the wife doesn't talk about ways to perhaps compromise, or apparently work a job of her own. Not that being a stay-at-home mom is easy by any means, but it doesn't seem to be stressing her out to the point where she ever looks any less than perfectly dressed, coiffed, made-up, etc.

But, then, that standing around and looking gorgeous is Kate Beckinsale's job in this movie. She's excellent at it, and she does deliver the "maybe you should adjust your priorities" lines without seeming like a complete scold. Sandler spends a lot of the movie coasting, even though his heart's in the right place. He frustrates me. He's got enough smarts to work with Paul Thomas Anderson to viciously deconstruct the movies that made him wealthy with Punch-Drunk Love, and he's shown flashes of talent in most of his films, this one included. But he can be so lazy! There's one scene in this movie where he can't even seem to cough believably on camera. Walken brings a light touch to his performance, almost floating above the rest of the movie. Hasselhoff, Sean Astin, and Jennifer Coolidge often show more personality than the leads in fairly small roles. Henry Winkler and Julie Kavner show up. The kids are cute.

I'm starting to resent Adam Sandler. He gets casts of people I like, and has a couple good movies in his past, and thus makes it hard for me to just pass on his movies, even though I really should know better by now.

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originally posted: 06/23/06 21:16:05
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