Remotely Entertaining

About fifteen years ago I wrote a song called "Rewind the World" about a guy wanting to revisit the missteps in his past to figure out where he went wrong. So you can imagine that I approached "Click" - the Adam Sandler vehicle about a man given a universal remote than literally controls the universe - with a certain amount of interest. Not because I was upset that missed my opportunity to write an Adam Sandler movie, but because I thought the team behind "The Wedding Singer" might actually be able to have a little fun with the concept. While it has its moments, "Click" is nothing to sing about.

Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe, the writing team behind the similarly disappointing "Bruce Almighty" cook up another story of a man, in this case Mr. Sandler's architect Mike Newman, given godly powers, this time in the form of a remote control that can pause, fast forward and rewind the world. In an inspired bit, Mike happens upon the "Beyond" section of "Bed, Bath & Beyond" and encounters none other than Christopher Walken in a frightwig. Mr. Walken's Morty is, more or less, your typical Walken character and he is truly beyond.

Throwing science to the curb, the writers pretty much decide the remote is magic and, since the film opens with The Cars' "Magic", I'm willing to suspend my disbelief. However, once the writers have exhausted the features of a standard remote (color, language and DVD commentary are particularly amusing) they reach a dead-end and the film takes a turn straight into "It's a Wonderful Life" territory. The remote, it seems, has the ability to learn, and begins skipping pieces of Mike's life, so you know a scene in front of a tombstone can't be too far away. Oddly, for all the skipping ahead, the Rewind button is never mentioned.

Mr. Sandler is a likable enough guy and it's always amusing to see him playing a grown-up. Like Mr. Carrey in "Bruce", he's meant to be an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation. But Mr. Sandler isn't an ordinary guy. He's a goofy man-child trapped in a script with nowhere to go. When Mr. Sandler's Mike is forced to confront that he's missed the best parts of his life, he defaults to a voice of breathy amazement that makes me reach for the fast forward button.

Directed by Frank Coraci, who teamed with Mr. Sandler on "The Waterboy" and "The Wedding Singer" (still Sandler's best), "Click" wants to teach a lesson about appreciating life. But Mike is no George Bailey. This is an Adam Sandler movie after all - if the stuffed-animal-humping-dog running gag doesn't tip you off then the flatulence jokes will - and the filmmakers would have been better served to stick to that territory. Having used the remote in a series of short-sighted, infantile, and at times amusing, pleasures, the detour into moral territory couldn't be more forced. For all its competing aspirations, the movie just never clicks.