It Came from Cable!

Change the channel- Sandler's latest comedy doesn't, oh, you get the idea.  (Film Review)

by Michael Sean McGowan

The Upside: Christopher Walken, we luv ya...

The Downside: You can't turn it off.

    Let me tell you a few of the things I can believe in for the sake of a movie.  I believe a tidal wave can knock over a cruise ship.  I believe Tom Hanks can rewrite world history.  I'll even do you one better and say that I believe that Tom Cruise can, once and a while, "act."  And for the purposes of Click, I believe a guy like Mike Newman can possess a magical remote control that can alter the world around him; rewind to his favorite childhood memories, mute a bitchy neighbor, and put everything on pause so he can give his boss a couple of good licks.  What I don't believe is that Mike Newman, or anyone, would use that magic remote to skip having sex with Kate Beckinsale.  This isn't the only bone I have to pick with Click; this thing's an ego-driven oddity that's as screwed up in its priorities as its proportions, coupled with a field of feint jabs at humor and a one-note premise that... oh, for God's sake, it's Kate Beckinsale!  What are you, freakin' nuts?!

    Oh, pardon me.  Where was I?

    There are things about Click that work, a lot more that don't, but in pure cart-before-the-horse fashion, the things that don't work are given front-row-center attention.  Click is what results when a manic, taste-be-damned comedian like Adam Sandler not only gets to star in a comedy with a swollen budget, but gets to produce it, too.  Sandler is probably only one step up from Rob Schneider as a film critic's favorite piñata target, and not without good reason.  It isn't healthy for any star to exercise too much influence on both sides of the camera and what results with Sandler and other id-driven comedians like Robin Williams and Jim Carrey is a toxic overindulgence of their own antics to the exclusion of all else.  There's a correlation to be seen in some of the few times critics have warmed up to Sandler in movies like Spanglish and Punch Drunk Love (okay, not everyone liked these two, but at least they cut Sandler a break).  Both times Sandler worked with directors who weren't afraid to put him on a leash and work him into the picture, rather than letting him turn it into a one-man-show with a useless supporting cast.  This isn't the case with Click.  Sandler's the star of the show and wants you to know it as he chomps his way through scene after scene, including the time he starts into a dance routine for no reason.

      If it's Sandler's over-eager gumption powering Click, it runs on a suspension of a one-note joke and a script that's as bewilderingly vapid as it is obsessed with junior high school locker room humor.  I'm not sure if comedy was designed for a high-concept premise, or if anything was, for that matter.  Sandler's Mike Newman is an architect who finds himself spending every waking moment playing up to his firm's lothario commander-in-chief (David Hasselhoff), even when it means missing his son's swim meet or spending a Fourth of July picnic on the cell phone.  Take away the rational human impulse that would drive an at least reasonably educated man to find a job where he doesn't have to keep vampire hours and you've got Newman as a soul-crash waiting to happen.  He walks into a Bed Bath and Beyond looking for a universal remote and a bespectacled clerk named Morty (Christopher Walken) takes him into a back room with a sign reading "Way Beyond."

    "I'm going to rock your world," Morty says, and this is where the fun (warning: term used very loosely) begins.  Morty gives Mike a remote that does more than work the Tivo- it allows him to speed his life up, slow it down, and commit that crime against humanity I mentioned in the first paragraph and will restrain myself for going off on again, yes sir.  In its one singular way, Click is a cautionary tale about the over-indulgence of distractions (like the movies, perhaps?) that allow us to speed our lives by.  Mike quickly gets on a life-channel-surfing kick, fast forwarding his way through every unpleasant or dull event.  Dinner with the parents?  Zoom.  Cold shower?  Double zoom.

    Making love to the wife, played by Kate Beckinsale?  Don't you dare get me started on this again.

    The premise gives Click a lot to play around with- Mike uses the devious little device watch a picture-in-picture game during a fight or listen to the running commentary on his life by James Earl Jones (!).  What's wrong is that Click blows its wad fast and hard.  Comedies with weird ideas like Being John Malkovich always run into the trouble of, once the gag is trotted out, having nothing else to do but spin the wheels for an hour or so.  Click is no different- where Malkovich at least had the jumpy creativity of Spike Jonze to limp its way home on, director Frank Coraci can't find any way to expand on the movie's singular gag after it's been exhausted in the opening thirty minutes.

    Click always has a peculiar disproportion to what it finds amusing.  It's a cliché to say this wouldn't be an Adam Sandler movie if it didn't have jokes aimed at the crowd who think breasts and flatulence are the funniest things in the world, but there's an unnerving concentration on things in the script that just are not funny.  As Click fast-forwards through Michael Newman's life, his family ends up with a series of dogs who get a kick out of humping a giant, stuffed duck.  See it once and you might grin, but Click repeats it so often I wonder if the dog- or maybe the duck- has a spin-off deal coming down the pipe.  And what can you say when a movie can't even take a Michael Jackson joke,  what should be the easiest thing in the world, and get it right?

    What hurts is that with so much of Click withering on the vine, there are funny things to it.  Movies like this always have the Obnoxious Boss, and while this may not be the best sort of praise in the world, Hasselhoff shines here as a guy whose architectural firm is half business, half harem.  The one howler in the film comes right from him, when he gives a wonderfully cheeky send-up of an over-age lounge lizard teaching a workshop on sexual harassment.  Of course, this isn't the movie's main course, so it ends up sliced and diced by it's own gimmick.  Given plenty of screen time but not enough attention is Walken, who for half of his life has set the standard for creepy, psychopathic weirdoes, and for the next half has been born to play offbeat zany characters like this.  Like always, Beckinsale is a trooper, but has nothing to do but stand aside and look exasperated at her husband's antics.

    With so much of it out of joint, Click works harder for its star than it does for itself.  It literally feels like a toy coming broken out of the box, the kind of Christmas gift you used to get that where two parts would fall off for every one you snapped on.  Other than its faithfulness to the Alter of Toilet Humor it isn't offensive, it really isn't awful, either.  It's messy, disorganized, and something destined in short time for DVD, where he can use our own fast-forward buttons in revenge.  C

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