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General Audiences: C+
Great premise: What if you could use
your TV universal remote to control your
universe. Our imaginations swim with
ideas. Adam Sandler experiments with the
possibilities with mixed results. Lots
of laughs in the beginning, but soon
bathroom humor overkill and 11th hour
sentimentality ends the fun.
Family Audiences: Not appropriate
Although rated PG-13 for language, crude
and sex-related humor, and some drug
references, the ratings folks often
exaggerate undesirable content. Not in
this case. When a seven-year-old boy
swears like a drunken sailor and his
six-year-old sister asks dad if he’s
doing drugs while the family dog is
having its way with a stuffed toy for
the umpteenth time in the background,
PG-13 doesn’t look strong enough.
When it comes to the target audience,
the trailers for Click are
deceptive. They’re designed to appeal to
children based on a comical out-take
from the film involving two boys ages
seven and 10 playing catch.
You may have seen the sketch. The older
boy is an obnoxious bully ridiculing the
younger one for constantly dropping the
ball. Using a magical TV remote, Michael
Newman (Adam Sandler) hits “pause,”
which freezes the ball in mid-air, then
lowers the baseball glove on the naughty
boy and hits “pause” again.
Predictably the ball strikes the bully
in the face. Kids who see this trailer
laugh out loud and can’t wait to see the
movie. Problem is, this is definitely
not family fare.
In spite of the presence of two very
young and endearing children (Joseph
Castanon and Tatum McCann), who
comprise architect Michael Newman’s
nuclear family, college-age audiences
are the real target audience for the
crude, sophomoric humor that permeates
this film.
Those tired sight gags involving big
breasts, flatulence and dogs doing
stereotypical dog things stand in
(poorly, I should add) for original
humor. They appear to be lifted
wholesale from recent films like Meet
the Folkers and
Benchwarmers.
At least the writers in Meet
the Folkers were kind enough
to limit screen time to just to one dog
procreation scene. In Click we’re
subjected to 10 such episodes.
Fortunately, there is a plot that ties
familiar bathroom humor together.
Michael Newman is a brilliant
mild-mannered architect married to the
beautiful and sexy Donna (Kate
Beckinsale). They have two wonderful and
witty children. Unfortunately for the
wife and kids, Michael is an ambitious,
workaholic father with little time for
the family.
In one scene, after staying up all night
to work, a tired Michael becomes
frustrated because he can’t figure out
which of his assortment of gadgets will
turn on the TV set. He jumps in the car
and prowls the nearby retail chain
stores in search of a universal remote.
Instead of choosing the more promising
Circuit City store, he strolls into Bed,
Bath & Beyond and enters a door at the
back that reads “Beyond.” There he meets
Mort (Christopher Walken), an eccentric
employee repairman, who gives him an
unusual remote device with the power to
send its user back into the past,
forward into the future or simply to
freeze the present.
Michael takes the thing home and begins
experimenting with its magical powers,
discovering that it will allow him to
silence his barking dog, fast forward
through arguments with his wife or
bypass traffic on the way to work.
Everything he perceives as unpleasant,
including massage as an integral part of
sex with his wife, is simply eliminated
by a click of the remote. This selfish
sap is so fast on the trigger (the TV
remote, that is) that he leaves his wife
repeatedly unsatisfied.
Predictably, of course, the remote
starts doing things Michael doesn’t want
it to do, like racing forward in time 10
years at a pop. Michael takes the device
back to Mort, however is told it is
non-returnable and can’t be destroyed.
Click
starts out as a comedy for the first
hour, sustaining our interest with the
intriguing premise of going back to
one's past or doing naughty things in
the present to people we don’t like.
Sadly, the second half begins to run out
of good ideas and suddenly transforms
into a seriously sentimental montage
evoking memories of It’s A
Wonderful Life.
At this point the laughter subsides,
doom and gloom set in and you’re left
wondering what's the moral of the story.
Second thought: I went to see this film
for a good laugh, not moral inspiration.
Who cares what the moral is. At the
beginning of the second half of Click
I should have hit fast forward on my own
remote and left it while I was still
laughing. |
