Click (2006)

Originally Written

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Adam Sandler makes a triumphant return in another sub-par comedy which by no surprise made him millions. Pretty funny back in the day, an older Sandler's limited acting abilities, constant yelling, and crude humor is becoming a little stale.

Adam Sandler plays Michael Newman, an architect who is doing everything he can to get promoted to partner in his firm, even if that means neglecting his family. His life is so crazy that he is beginning to run out of energy and patience, but all this is about to change when he meets Morty (Christopher Walken) who gives to him a universal remote, a remote that Michael discovers can control more than just the household appliances, but his own life.

At first Michael gets an extreme kick out of the remote, using it to mute obnoxious noises, fast forward through fights with his wife, breeze through traffic and physically abuse his boss without him even knowing it. But soon Michael begins to get carried away and begins to fast forward through entire days and months in hopes of obtaining his promotion faster. But as it turns out a few months ends up turning into over a year and he's completely missed a year of his family’s life. Things begin to get worse as the remote begins to fast forward through time on its own and Michael is unable to stop it, left watching as his entire life literally fast forwards in front of him.

Hoping for something much better than Sandler's last attempt at a comedy (The Longest Yard), Click sadly fails to be much superior. Maybe it's the fact that Sandler is in his late 30's and still doing the exact same films he was doing in the early 90's with films like Happy Gilmore, thing is back then at least it was funny. Click really fails to be much of a comedy at all; the only funny scenes are limited to physical humor where someone gets hit, kicked, or my personal favorite Sandler blasting a few farts in the face of "The Hoff".

The first half of the film is only slightly entertaining, including way too many scenes of the family dog humping a large yellow stuffed duck, a joke which was repeated about ten times and became incredibly stupid after the first. The first half also includes a large majority of cursing which pushed the boundaries of a PG-13 rating in my opinion, I have heard less cursing in R rated films. By the time the film progresses to the second half it makes an 360 degree turn from slightly amusing to incredibly depressing, as Sandler's character begins to reap the consequences of his over use of the remote. While the second half the movie was incredibly dreary, it still trumps the horrible excuse for comedy in the first half of the film.

The acting was below average, nothing much to comment on Sandler, other than the fact he is still no closer to obtaining an Oscar... or even a nomination for one. My favorite actress, Kate Beckinsale, puts on an incredibly average performance in a role that by far ranks among her worst. And ironically enough the best performance is from the king of ridiculous roles, Christopher Walken, who was by far the most entertaining character of them all, and had a character twist near the end of the film which was rather interesting.

Overall, I'm stuck between giving this film a 4 or 5, it definitely doesn't deserve a high rating and the first half of the film was a large disappointment but it managed to barely turn itself around in the second half with a rather emotional twist to the story. One thing I don't understand is if Michael could fast forward time, why couldn't he rewind it and go back and make better decisions, instead of only being able to watch it. Logically if you can manipulate time to make it speed up or slow down, you should be able to go back and redo it, which is something the writers should have done prior to releasing this film.

5/10