Review: Click

Workaholic Adam Sandler meets weirdo scientist Christopher Walken who gives him a ‘universal remote’, a magical device that can seemingly do anything, and certainly allows its user to juggle both work and family commitments. Sandler figures he can fast-forward through a lot of stuff (arguments, and hell, even sex) to focus on work commitments (Everyone’s favourite punchline, David Hasselhoff is Sandler’s tyrannical boss) in order to get a promotion that gives him more personal freedom and time with his family. Unfortunately, the remote ‘learns’ Sandler’s habits, and soon Sandler is skipping whole sections of his life, leading to domestic unhappiness. Well, that’s what you get for fast-forwarding sex with hottie wife Kate Beckinsale. I mean, is this guy nuts or what? I’d be playing that in slow-mo, dude! Frequent replays! TiVo it and watch it over and over! Henry Winkler plays Sandler’s loving father, Julie Kavner (Marge Simpson herself) is his mother, Jennifer Coolidge plays the same bimbo she always does (here playing Beckinsale’s dopey friend), “SNL” comedienne Rachel Dratch plays a gender-confused secretary (not really a stretch, is it?), our own Sophie Monk plays a...bimbo (she’s good at it, and a good sport), and Sean Astin plays a Speedo-sporting (you’ve been warned!) potential lunch-cutter, if you catch my drift.

Although it starts out as horribly as the trailer made it look, this 2006 Frank Coraci (“The Wedding Singer”, which is one of Sandler’s best, and “The Waterboy”, which is not) flick with “It’s a Wonderful Life” similarities, is a bit funnier and a tad more thoughtful than I anticipated. It’s certainly a clever Capra update in theory, and there are some interesting ideas here and there (Sandler’s life has an audio commentary by James Earl Jones, he can change the colour and contrast like on a TV, and don’t even ask what the ‘making of...’ featurette is, you don’t want to know!), but the humour is too often predictable and juvenile, and when the film goes for dramatics towards the end, it falls flat.

I don’t blame the actors too much here. Sandler has proven he can play it straight on occasion and Winkler certainly can, but this film heads into some pretty dark territory that it can’t properly address under the constraints of an Adam Sandler vehicle. Also, Coraci clearly isn’t a strong enough director to guide his actors and make the serious, emotional stuff work. However, it would perhaps have been a better film if helmed by a stronger director (or an inventive writer like Charlie Kaufman) and perhaps starring someone like Jim Carrey, who might have done a little better than Sandler in the dramatic department (and might have had more chemistry with Beckinsale than Sandler does, though I’m only guessing).

Same old story for Sandler: Aome of it works, a lot of it doesn’t. And most painfully of all, it’s nearly two hours long! What’s up with that? This should’ve been 95 minutes at most.

Rating: C+