There is probably no film this year I'll struggle with in terms of how I feel
about it than Click, a mix of surprisingly mature comedy mixed jarringly
with downright juvenile moments of gross-out gags. Many have compared the
film to It's a Wonderful Life, and while there is an undeniably Capra-esque
quality to the story, I think the films are sufficiently different to avoid claiming it
as a carbon copy. It's a Wonderful Life is a lesson in what
one man's life means to that of everyone around him, while Click is
really about what everyone else's life means to the one man.
Other
similarities do exist (the angel, for instance), but if one really wants to place
Click in the proper context, it should really be lumped in more with the
high-concept comedy-fantasies that have been made in more recent years, like
Groundhog Day and
Bruce Almighty, whereby a malcontent jerk
learns a valuable lesson that his unhappiness with his life isn't really caused
by outside forces, but rather, it resides squarely within himself.
Not surprisingly, it should be noted that the screenplay for Click is
written and produced by Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe, the men that brought us
Bruce Almighty.
Adam Sandler (The
Longest Yard, Spanglish) stars as workaholic
father and husband Michael Newman, an architect that continuously has been
putting his family on the backburner so that he can finally get that promotion
to partner in his company and finally getting that sense of achievement that has
always been eluding him all his life. One of the many frustrations of his
home life happens to come from the ridiculous amount of remote controls in his
house, most of which he has no idea how to use or what they control. To
simplify things, he opts to get a universal remote so that he can control all of
his appliances with one simple-to-use item.
The only store open at the time is "Bed,
Bath & Beyond", who generally don't sell entertainment electronics, although a
trip to the fictional "Beyond" section proves to yield results. Behind the
strange door is an oddball of an inventor named Morty (Walken,
Wedding Crashers), who just so happens to
have a universal remote -- a remote that allows Michael to control his own
universe, literally. When Michael takes it home, he finds he can use the
remote to pause or fast forward through events of his life, change the
appearance or volume of objects, and a sundry of other handy uses that makes all
of the tedium and annoyances virtually disappear. However, the remote has
one feature Michael didn't know about: it intuitively remembers patterns in his
behavior, and whenever he encounters a similar situation where it is usually
employed, it automatically performs the function it has stored in its memory.
Soon, Michael can't get the remote to stop, and now his life is literally
flashing before his very eyes, and he's not liking what he sees.
It sounds like an extended episode of "The
Twilight Zone", and in fact, there is a similarity to one of the the classic Rod
Serling offerings, "A Kind of Stopwatch", whereby a self-centered man discovers
a stopwatch that can stop time, which he uses to take control of his life, but
which has tragic consequences caused by his own selfish behavior (1980's
made-for-TV film, The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything also lifted
this premise). Of course, this is an Adam Sandler film, which
usually means that it is going to take a much more comedic approach, although it
does still maintain the very dark nature of the main theme of a life wasted
amidst all of the surrounding slapstick and goofiness.
I have to admit here that my expectations
for Click were about as low as could be going in, and I was surprised by
how engaged I was in the film once the fantasy premise was underway.
Director Frank Corsaci (Around the World in 80 Days,
The Waterboy) does imbue the film with the
necessary element of the fantastic to buy into the farfetched premise, and the
main story elements as conceived of by Koren and O'Keefe provide just the right
ingredients to deliver all of the comedy, tragedy, and heartbreak that the moral
lessons at the core of the film require to succeed. As nutty as it might
sound when you first hear of the plot, it amazingly does work.
If there is anything to complain about,
it's the cheapening of the Koren/O'Keefe screenplay by Adam Sandler and longtime
Sandler collaborator Tim Herlihy (Mr. Deeds,
Little Nicky). I
did get some solid laughs at some of the film's most crass moments of humor, but I
do think that all of the sophomoric antics come at a heavy price. It's a
tall order to try to inspire us to be better people with a morality play of sorts,
and then inject the film with some very crude and lewd moments, especially when
so much time is spent on them. For instance, as much screen time is given
to the escapades of the family dog, who just can't seem to be able to stop
humping the oversized stuffed duck laying on the floor in the living room, as
there is for the relationship between Michael and his children. While the
humor involving the dog is undeniably funny through constant repetition, it also
does reduce the emotional momentum of the film, which results in a lessened
pay-off as the film tries to go for your heartstrings with an emotional and
mostly serious climax.
We're expected to feel something for this
shallow and hotheaded jerk without really giving us enough moments of his better
qualities, which makes Morty's assertions that he is trying to help Michael
because he is a good man ring very hollow. A scene involving Michael
stopping time to slap around his boss (Hasselhoff, "Baywatch") and then fart
into his mouth is deemed a much more worthy exploration than in the relationship
between Michael and his parents. When Michael is confronted with the fact
that his father (Winkler, Holes) has
passed away, the story goes right into heavy sentimentality, but without the
necessary build-up, it has no authority to earn the heart-wrenching feelings
from us it practically begs for.
Yet, for all of its sizable detractions,
Click does deliver the goods for Sandler fans, whom I suspect will think
this one of his better vehicles to date. Not really being a huge Sandler
fan, I also found it surprisingly funny and thoughtful enough to keep my
interest, although my recommendation of the film comes with heavy reservations,
as the mix of the sublime with the crass may prove to be too toxic to stomach
for many viewers out there. If only Sandler could resist the temptation to
smear all of his films with his own immature impulses, we might actually have
one of the year's best comedies. Instead, we wish we could take that
remote away from Sandler and control him with it ourselves, if only so that we
could make him stop metaphorically farting in our faces whenever we actually
make the mistake of thinking he is finally maturing into a performer worthy of
our respect and admiration.
