Newsfeed
Printer-Friendly ModeClick leaves Sandler fans wanting to press eject
June 26, 2006 —
Click is one of those movies that tries so hard to get things right that you almost feel bad for not liking it. Maybe it is just easier to pick out all of the things that go wrong than to appreciate what the movie manages to pull off.
Write all of Click's failures down in a list and you will quickly realize that what you have in front of you pretty much summarizes Adam Sandler's entire filmography post-1997.
Number one: where are the jokes? Note to Sandler: when you can secure David Hasselhoff for your next movie, you better have something funny for him to say.
Number two: Rob Schneider cameos only work when you give him something funny to say.
Well, supposing the point has already been made, I will move on. The rest of the list pretty much just contains variations of numbers one and two anyway.
So Click is no laugh riot. That does not automatically rule it a failure. But in the eyes of Sandler fans, it should. The success of a Sandler movie is directly proportional to the number of laughs incited in theaters - or something like that. Basically, Adam Sandler used to be a pretty funny guy, and people (including myself) expect every one of his movies to be equally funny. But we've all been disappointed so much that these expectations are getting lower and lower with each new movie.
I have learned my lesson having seen Big Daddy and Mr. Deeds in theaters, so I no longer go to Adam Sandler movies looking for a laugh. I go because I get paid to review them.
And not only is Click not funny, it is actually quite depressing. Perhaps it is necessary to explain the plot of the movie before going any further.
Click finds Sandler playing Michael Newman, a workaholic architect trying to get a promotion from his boss, played by Hasselhoff. So, in typical Hollywood movie style, Newman chooses work over family whenever possible. Enter Christopher Walken as a bizarre Bed, Bath & Beyond employee who sells Newman a universal remote.
On a side note, a thirty-something architect who can't figure out which remote turns on the television is about as believable as Will Smith admitting he does not know where "on my PC that CD goes" in his hit song "Just the Two of Us."
Anyway, the remote actually controls the world around Newman, not just his television, and he can pause, mute, and fast-forward events in his life.
What's so depressing about that? Well, some unforeseen side effects cause Newman to fast-forward through years of his life at a time, until eventually he is an old man and has missed out on living. The movie then becomes just another reminder of how mortal we all are, and how precious time really is, and how you just wasted two hours of that precious time watching another sub-par Adam Sandler movie.
But like I said earlier, it is hard to hate this movie. Click takes a plot that is amateurish and tries its hardest to do something with it. At times it is touching, and even though I hate to make myself out to be a hypocrite in my movie reviews, there are a few funny scenes. The movie is not a complete failure, which is something, I suppose.
Really, if Click had tried to be serious and not so goofy, it might be a pretty good movie. But as it stands, it is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as envisioned by the guy who wrote A Night at the Roxbury.
Unfortunately, that isn't enough to win Sandler any new fans, and it might not be enough for him to retain the fans who have stuck with him thus far.