Click

Bomb Rating: 

Most of the jokes in "Click" are akin to overripe fruit that's been lying on the ground awhile: easy to get, not particularly crisp, and, on occasion, halfway rotten and full of maggots.

The only thing surprising about the "what if there were a TiVo remote for real life" concept driving this film is that is hasn't already inspired six or seven films in the same vein (like the strange surge of "what if the kid and parent switched place" movies in the '80s). Since so many people are living increasingly through their televisions and DVD players, the idea seems not so much fresh as strangely overdue.

Since it's the first to really farm the concept, however, "Click" is free to feast on all the low-hanging comedic fruit it has to offer. In fact, most of the jokes in "Click" are akin to overripe fruit that's been lying on the ground awhile: easy to get, not particularly crisp, and, on occasion, halfway rotten and full of maggots. Example: While a dog humping an inappropriate object is considered funny, a dog humping an inappropriate object in fast-motion is considered comedy gold.

You know that in a film like this, Adam Sandler can be one of two things: A slacker with an inappropriately hot girlfriend who will leave him if he doesn't change his ways, or a workaholic dad with an inappropriately hot wife who will leave him if he doesn't change his ways. Since Sandler's "maturing" as an actor, we get the latter. The plot's just what you'd expect: Michael Newman (Sandler) sacrifices family time for work time, then is presented with a magic, life-controlling remote from eccentric shopkeeper Morty (Christopher Walken) which allows him to have it both ways. You can take it from there, all the way to the horrible catch.

In the meantime, I'd like to pause for a moment on this "daddy should stop working so much" line of thinking that passes for conventional wisdom in movies these days. Call me a heretic, but just where the heck do all these unhappy wives and kids of workaholic daddies think all that money comes from, anyway? Michael's wife (Kate Beckinsale) isn't helping any with the bills; all she does is complain and extrude children. Does she really think the family would be happier with a daddy who's can't afford to buy a decent house or send the kids to college? Have you seen what college costs? Do you know what happens when daddy has lots of time to hang around the house? He starts drinking. Just once, I want to see the storyline where daddy's epiphany is that he better stop screwing around throwing the ball around the back yard and get serious about his career, or else his kids are going to be eating Arby's, living in a trailer park, and forgoing a higher education in favor of attending a state school in one of the red states.
Anyway, the plot seems to have been derived by having the screenwriters note all the options on their DVD remote and then making sure Adam Sandler steps through them all, one by one. Toward the end, the movie's worked through all its overripe comedy fruit and decides it needs to turn inexplicably morbid in an attempt to teach the audience a valuable lesson. Suddenly, jokes are few and far between as we realize that a primary goal of "Click" is to be a 'bridge film" that attempts, yet again, to prove that Adam Sandler -- no, really -- could be a serious actor, and should be thought of as the next Tom Hanks, not the next Jim Carrey.

If I had a remote while watching "Click," I'd turn it off.

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