Review: "Click"

by Jeff McGinnis, Lead Usher

**1/2 stars (out of four)
98 minutes, Now Showing

Adam Sandler certainly has some likeable notes in his repertoire. The question I have whenever I see a movie he's in is, will he play them? Sandler's career up to this point has been a hit-or-miss affair, with the misses sadly far outweighing the hits. I recognize that this puts me firmly into the minority of modern moviegoers, as he's one of our most popular comedic actors. But when I watch his films, I can't shake the feeling that, more often than not, I'd rather die than share a table at Starbucks with one of his characters.

I can and have liked an Adam Sandler movie. The brilliant "Punch-Drunk Love" played wonderfully off of the quirks in Sandler's basic persona by twisting it into the confines of a P.T. Anderson premise, and Sandler was great in it. "50 First Dates" was the first out-and-out Sandler comedy I thoroughly enjoyed, so sweet and funny. I loved his remake of "The Longest Yard," though the idea of Sandler playing a hotshot ex-quarterback seemed somewhat ridiculous on its surface.

What do all three of these cases have in common? In them, Sandler either a.) played a likeable character, or b.) the fact that his character was NOT likeable was the point. In "Love," his character was a bundle of neurosis who saw no value in himself, until he fell in love. In "Dates," he was a womanizer who learned the value of love only when he had to try so hard to get it. "Yard" saw his character go through guilt and denial as he tried to define who he was to himself.

Now comes "Click." In theory, this would be another perfect opportunity to add another notch to the Adam Sandler Likeability Meter - a mainstream comedy with a nice message about learning to take life one day at a time, or else you might miss it. There is a good movie in here...but sadly, it gets torpedoed by the fact that Sandler's character is a flat-out jerk. And this isn't a case of "he learns that he's being a jerk and reforms." Not really. What he learns is that he should pay attention to his family and be less concerned about work. But a lot of other things he does - tormenting the next door neighbor's kid, holding senseless grudges, snipping at his kids - all these things are really unrelated to the main storyline, and put the audience off on the character right off the bat. When Christopher Walken's character says to him, "Good guys need a break every now and then," we wonder what good guy he's referring to, exactly.

The plot: Sandler plays Michael Newman, an architectural designer for a firm. His boss (David Hasslehoff) is a tool who takes advantage of his hard work, and Michael is constantly having to cut back on life with his family as a result. His wife, Donna (Kate Beckinsale) seems a sweet and lovely woman, and is very, VERY patient with Michael in some early scenes where any sane woman would probably have slapped him upside the head a few times.

Anyway, one night Michael tears himself away from his designs to buy a universal remote control, as he's tired of wrestling with his own pile of remotes at home. He stumbles into Bed, Bath and Beyond, and in the "Beyond" section (a joke which would have been way funnier if "Family Guy" hadn't done it a year ago), he meets Morty (Walken), a technician who seems just a hair removed from Philo from "UHF." He gives Michael a "very advanced" remote, stressing that there's a no-return policy.

It doesn't take long for Michael to figure out that the remote works on more than just his TV and DVD player. It controls everything in his life. He can fast forward anything he doesn't want to have to do, flash back to previous scenes to re-experience them, even listen to commentary on his life by James Earl Jones ("He does a LOT of voice-over work"). When his boss makes his latest set of unreasonable demands, Michael hits pause and proceeds to hit him across the face a few times, not reflecting upon the fact that he could just as easily stop time and get the work done almost instantly. He also skips over most any meeting with his parents, played by Henry Winkler and Julie Kavner. How the Fonz and Marge Simpson could have turned out such a rotten kid is beyond me.

The film's more emotional portions come later, when the remote begins to automatically fast-forward past things that it believes Michael doesn't want to experience, like illnesses or foreplay. Eventually it moves forward several years at a time, causing Michael to miss tons of important events and remember nothing, though he was still there, physically. Morty explains to him that when he fast forwards, all that's left is a shallow husk that performs only with the most basic of emotional responses. We in the audience can't see any really appreciable difference between "all there" Michael and "shallow husk" Michael, save for the fact that shallow husk doesn't yell as often.

See, there's the problem...I just couldn't care about the movie because I just couldn't care about the character. If Sandler had played the role just a notch or two lower, toned down the obnoxious persona, I probably would have really enjoyed it. It has a funny gimmick and a nice story, with some nifty gags and something genuine to say about life. The writers are Steve Koren and Mark O' Keefe, who wrote the wonderful "Bruce Almighty," which had a similar arc about a guy who learns about the faults in his own life through extraordinary intervention. But in that one, part of the arc was Jim Carrey's character learning and reflecting on what a jerk he had been, and making steps to correct that, too. With Sandler, a lot of what happens earlier is not addressed in the all-too-brief wrap-up which comes at the end. It's like seeing Scrooge buy the goose, but still not being sure if he's gonna give it to the Cratchetts or cook it for himself.

It's really a shame. There's a lot of very good stuff here, and Sandler's core audience will probably enjoy it very much. I, however, will just have to wait for the next film to come along and hope that Adam plays some of the nicer notes on his scale then. The odds aren't good, I admit, but it can happen. I've seen it.