Posted: 06/29/2006

Click

(2006)

by Michael Jones

Hollywood enjoys making comparisons between current actors and their past and future equivalents. Tom Hanks reminds us of Jimmy Stewart, while people are banking on Topher Grace to assume Hanks’ place once his likeability no longer becomes bankable (see The Terminal box-office results for proof). And that is perhaps the greatest failing of the walking, talking fart joke known as Adam Sandler. For while audiences can only remember the Billy Madison in Sandler—a walking, talking fart machine of a man-child—we also know he’s capable of so much more. His turn in Punch Drunk Love proved that—and subsequently, his disappointing return to Anger Management verified Sandler’s affinity for punching below his weight. So what to make of Click? For better or worse, it’s a film tailored for Sandler because it highlights the man’s career arc: over-the-top hump jokes for the first hour and dramatic sadness for the final forty minutes.

A mixture of A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life, the film sets up a career-myopic architect Michael (Sandler) with the two kids, dog, mortgage and the out-of-his-league wife (Kate Beckinsale). Constantly sacrificing his family and health for the big promotion at work, Michael is at wit’s end until a late-night encounter with a mysterious kook (Christopher Walken) who gives him the universal remote that can alter the fabric of time and space. It is at this point that I must interject the obvious flaw with this plot—there’s absolutely no reason to accept anything from Christopher Walken or anyone that reminds you of Christopher Walken. If I was crawling through the desert, my throat resembling a burned triscuit, and Christopher Walken walked up to me and offered me water, even then, I would understand that trouble lies ahead should I accept his water.

But Sandler, being the idiot he is, trusts Walken completely and has a lot of fun with his remote until it does the only thing an ethically-questionable remote does and fast-forwards his life until he’s wishing he could take it all back. Like a 100-minute moving Successories poster, Click is a parable about figuring out that one’s job and position is never nearly as important as having loved ones around them.

Of course, the point is rendered moot considering this movie had the same message…back when it was called Bruce Almighty. This shouldn’t come as a shocker since both films were written by the team of Steve Koren and Mark O’Keefe (who are also penning the Bruce sequel Evan Almighty starring Steve Carrell). We should be so lucky—an older, wiser Sandler didn’t use his usual bullpen of mentally-hindered miscreants (Allen Covert and Nick Swarsdon of Grandma’s Boy infamy). Otherwise, we could have expected more necro jokes sandwiched in between the fuzzy moments. This doesn’t really help the first two acts, but by the dramatic final third, Sandler is able to pull off something he wasn’t able to accomplish with Big Daddy and Mr. Deeds: credibly moving moments.

But that doesn’t save Sandler from the inescapable truth. While many have argued that Click is either a positive turning point in Sandler’s simpleton career or the inevitable slide towards comedic mediocrity (see Carrey, Jim or Murphy, Eddie). I’d lean towards the latter. Sandler is showing elements of growing up with his movies, from incoherent idiot to put upon suburbanite. But he crowds out other characters (like the eye candy Beckinsale) to the point that they’re irrelevant. If anything, Click is proof that Sandler has become his most famous character, Madison, the big boy too old for such asinine behavior.

Michael Jones is a film critic living in Madison, WI. He is not related to the rapper.

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