*** (out of ****)
Starring Adam Sandler, Kate Beckinsale, David Hasselhoff, Jennifer Coolidge, Henry Winkler, Julie Kavner, Sean Astin, and Christopher Walken
2006
108 min PG13
Amazingly, “Click” is a solid piece of entertainment. I know, I was stunned too. Maybe I’ve just seen too much Oscar-bait lately and am glad for anything without speeches and an aura of “Importance!” It’s not in the same league as “Punch-Drunk Love” and it’s still burdened with some of the weaknesses of the average Adam Sandler movie – the female “lead” is disposable, the message is visible from a mile off, the first twenty minutes make it out to be a chore, and it’s more shallow than we’d like. But “Click” tosses aside a lot of the junk that usually keeps Sandler down, giving his persona context and motivations instead of just situations. We believe he’s an actual person making choices, and not simply deposited into contrived positions to vent his sociopath tendencies.
“Click” is a perfectly serviceable pop variation on themes of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “A Christmas Carol,” in which it takes supernatural intervention for a busy functionary to see the error of his ways. In this case, Sandler plays a workaholic architect perpetually pushing aside the family that he loves for a job that he hates BECAUSE he thinks that’s what’s best for his family.
That’s when a mysterious mad scientist (oh, Christopher Walken) gives him a mysterious remote control that mysteriously allows him to skip over all the boring parts of life. He’s still there, he’s just on autopilot, for instance shoveling spaghetti into his mouth while grunting monosyllables. He doesn’t actually have to put up with the NOW or even the memory of any action.
“Click” is not only a critique – albeit a breezy one – of delayed gratification but the polar opposite of, say, “Miami Vice.” In that film, it is only THE MOMENT that matters. “Click” is how most of us approach life – with many activities being in-and-of-themselves unimportant, but only mattering towards something far-off. And there’s something creepy about how, when Sandler is at first happy, he is happy because he’s not really in his life anymore. He turns his life into fiction, since fiction is basically life with all the boring parts cut out, like arguments and being sick. What Sandler discover is that, when all the bad parts are gone, there’s not much left.
“Click” is fittingly shot on digital video – it should, after all, look like a DVD, and the autopilot feature is nothing if not computerized. The remote essentially takes over his life but only does what he’s done with it before – it only follows what he has, by example, programmed it to do. Maybe this fascinates me because I’ve often daydreamed about a machine that would let us relive past incidents, not once, but in infinite variations.
As Sandler the actor has aged, so have his movies. He’s gone from being the straight-up sociopath of “Happy Gilmore” and “Billy Madison” to a nice guy with a buried sociopath always one inconvenience away from busting out. My wife pointed out that he’s gone from the man-child of his early movies (literally in elementary school) to a makeshift father (“Big Daddy”) to an actual husband in this film.
There are still plenty of dick ‘n fart jokes, but they don’t seem grafted on or overlong. More importantly, they are comic asides and not “Click’s” raison d’etre. As Sandler tumbles farther and farther into the future, it’s like the best parts of “The Butterfly Effect:” instead of just another action-hero-type sci-fi hero, both movies have a more engaging goofball instead.
Hit-and-miss are gags concerning the remote’s other features. It’s amusing to watch him mute spousal fights and annoying neighbors. Less interesting are him playing with tint and screen-size features. “Click” also has fine production values for a breezy sci-fi; the aging makeup and cars of the future are good.
Finished Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Friday & Saturday Night
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