Movie Notes: Click
September 18th, 2007

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= 2 stars
Starring Adam Sandler, Christopher Walken, Kate Beckinsale
Directed by Frank Coraci
I’m not an Adam Sandler fan, but do find some of his movies entertaining (50 First Dates, The Wedding Singer). Click, however, I didn’t care for. Sandler plays suburban everyman Michael Newman who’s given a magic remote that can control reality. I have a remote control for my DVD player, and I probably should taken a cue from the film and watched Click at 2x speed and with mute on. That would have saved an hour - and the film would have been just as understandable.
Click has a calculated, average-joe summer blockbuster feel. It sports several stars: Adam Sandler, Christopher Walken, David Hasselhof, and Kate Beckinsale, each guaranteed to attract a particular family demographic. The setting is suburbia: Michael (Adam Sandler) is a hard-working architect, married to illogically beautiful Donna (Kate Beckinsale), has two kids, and a dog. Adam has a typical, middle-class conflict between work and family - his cheesy boss Ammer (David Hasselhoff) forces him to cancel a camping trip in favor of work over a Fourth of July weekend. Frustrated, Sandler’s inability to figure out the multiple remote controls in his modest living room, drives him to rush out and purchase a universal remote. He drives by Best Buy and other big box stores and ends up at… Bed Bath and Beyond.
It’s at this point, not even a third through the film, that I found myself losing interest. Nutty professor Morty (Christopher Walken) appears in the “Beyond” part of the store and gives Adam the magical remote. Initially, it’s basically an excuse for some cornball visual effects. Michael uses pause to make Donna stop nagging, then fast forward to get the dog to take a poop faster, and implements mute to shut up an annoying driver (Terry Crews in a brief cameo, and the only point at which I laughed out loud). Other implementations of the remote come from the mind of an eleven-year-old boy.
At first Michael is overjoyed with his new found powers, but as in other similar films (Bruce Almighty) everything starts going to heck. At about the halfway point, it morphs into a sad remake of It’s A Wonderful Life. But the biggest problem with this tactic is while George Bailey was generous to a fault, Adam Sandler’s character is basically a completely selfish asshole.
Click seems to be a cautionary tale of crass materialism and an over-reliance on technology. But the ultimate oddity is how it ultimately shows the vapidity of the exact people to whom this film was marketed to - workaholic, mainstream, suburban America that are big fans of Adam Sandler movies. But the first part of the film isn’t satirical enough to make this clear. I didn’t know if I was supposed to identify with these brain-dead characters or laugh at them. Ultimately I found myself reaching for my own remote control. Click.
IMDB: Click
Wikipedia: Click
Rotten Tomatoes: Click 32%