Click (2006)
Directed by Frank Coraci
A married workaholic, Michael Newman doesn't have time for his wife and children, not if he's to impress his ungrateful boss and earn a well-deserved promotion. So when he meets Morty, a loopy sales clerk, he gets the answer to his prayers: a magical remote that allows him to bypass life's little distractions with increasingly hysterical results.
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The sector of the audience that comes to an Adam Sandler movie for the crude stuff won't warm up to this mid-life crisis, with its obvious echoes of Frank Capra's holiday perennial It's a Wonderful Life .
2 Stars (out of 4) Tweet Button Pushing By Jeffrey M. Anderson Adam Sandler's latest is a high-concept idea borrowed from It's a Wonderful Life (1946) that had the potential to be as deeply touching as The Truman Show (1998), but sways too far one direction into the vulgar and too far the other into the maudlin.
The title of the movie surely should have read "Cliché" for its outright rip-off of It's a Wonderful Life and every other movie about the value of family over a self-absorbed, super-charged work ethic.
But it's much more ambitious than those movies, thanks to a premise that recalls classics like "It's a Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Carol" and a bigger budget to accommodate the extensive makeup and visual effects.
Some of "Click" pays tribute to "It's a Wonderful Life" and (even more astonishingly) "A Christmas Carol."
It's watching Sandler channel Jimmy Stewart in Click, a film that owes more than a little to It's a Wonderful Life.
Though Walken's character is merely a retread of Christopher Lloyd's crack scientist in Back to the Future, he infuses all of the energy into this lethargic film.
The call comes via a universal remote given to him by a bushy-haired Christopher Walken (doing a calmer variation of Christopher Lloyd's Doc role in Back to the Future).
We've also seen a good deal of "Click" in other movies, "It's a Wonderful Life," "A Christmas Carol" and "Back to the Future" chief among them.
(We haven't seen product placement this blatant since 2000's Cast Away and its sponsor, Federal Express.)
2 Stars (out of 4) Tweet Button Pushing By Jeffrey M. Anderson Adam Sandler's latest is a high-concept idea borrowed from It's a Wonderful Life (1946) that had the potential to be as deeply touching as The Truman Show (1998), but sways too far one direction into the vulgar and too far the other into the maudlin.
Sandler's artistic indecisiveness continues in "Click," a film he probably hoped would do for him what "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "The Truman Show" did for Jim Carrey.
It's one of those great comedy performances (think Steve Martin in "Roxanne" or Eddie Murphy in "The Nutty Professor") that you hope people remember come awards time.
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Good, but this was much better when it was called Scrooged .
Granted, the rare auteurist bloodbath (Peter Jackson's Dead Alive, Michael Jackson's "Thriller") can scrounge genuine yuks from the gravest of situations, but as a rule, no one's laughing at doleful Macbeth despite the fact that, more and more, the Three Witches et al. feel as though they shambled straight out of one of the Coen brothers' more fabulist outings.
He goes to the "Beyond" section of the local Bed, Bath & Beyond and there encounters, behind the worst perm this side of Barbra Streisand in "The Way We Were," screwball scientist Morty (Christopher Walken), who takes him to "Way Beyond" and then "Way, Way Beyond," where the thing is stored.
Consciously or unconsciously, Click borrows from It's A Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, and Groundhog Day—all fables of moral redemption in which a too-proud hero gets his comeuppance only after being run through a temporal and existential gauntlet.
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If you've seen other movies in the genre, such as "Defending Your Life" and "Bruce Almighty," you know that Life Lessons loom for the increasingly tubby and schlubby hubby.
It’s a combination of both types of Adam Sandler, the dumb but easy going macho comedies like “The Waterboy” or “The Longest Yard”, and the more serious dramatic emotional guy from the likes of “Punch Drunk Love” and “The Wedding Singer”.
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.
Director Frank Coraci (Sandler's "The Wedding Singer" and "The Waterboy") does well with the possibilities of the premise in a few scenes and there's some funny topical humor, but the script loses inspiration fast and soon can't think of anywhere to go but low.
Frank Coraci, who directed Sandler in The Wedding Singer and The Waterboy, handles duties, although all auteurist interest lands strictly on Sandler, again providing unexpected emotional depth that shames the egotism of Steve Carrell and the "Frat Pack."
Adam Sandler's gathered his usual family around him for his other oeuvre - the one not targeted at adolescent boys - but while he's been surprisingly effective wearing this persona ("The Wedding Singer," "50 First Dates," "Spanglish"), "Click" doesn't quite cut it.
And so director Frank Coraci (The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy) and writers Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe (the men behind the very similar Bruce Almighty) fail to really capitalize on their idea.
The director, Frank Coraci, made The Waterboy and The Wedding Singer with Sandler in 1998, when Sandler was hungrier and funnier.
And so director Frank Coraci (The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy) and writers Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe (the men behind the very similar Bruce Almighty) fail to really capitalize on their idea.
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.
Director Frank Coraci (Sandler's "The Wedding Singer" and "The Waterboy") does well with the possibilities of the premise in a few scenes and there's some funny topical humor, but the script loses inspiration fast and soon can't think of anywhere to go but low.
The director, Frank Coraci (also of Sandler’s “The Waterboy” and “The Wedding Singer”), has his hands full with the change in tone, and I doubt he’ll please all of Sandler’s fans.