Review of Click (2006) by Markb. — 26 Jun 2006

Frank Capra's masterpiece It's A Wonderful Life just won the top spot on the American Film Institute's recently televised list of The 100 Most Inspirational Movies Of All Time, but it's highly doubtful that Adam Sandler's demented take on it will land anywhere near the list should the AFI update it in 30 years.

Now if we're talking "The Top 100 Crassest Unacknowledged Film Remakes" or "The Top 100 Most Egregious Molestations Of A Seemingly Sure-Fire Premise" or "The Top 100 Movies That Most Make You Want To Take A Shower After Seeing Them (And We Don't Mean A Cold One, Either)" THEN we're talking Top Ten status here.

[***SPOILERS***] Sandler plays alleged Everyman Michael Newman, a perpetually foul-tempered, family-neglecting, workaholic architect who's given a true "Universal Remote"--a hand-held device that allows him to not only control his TV set and gagage door but also his entire world; this sensationally clever, MAD Magazine-style premise just hums with possibilities, almost none of which are realized or explored in a movie that's far more interested (obsessed, in fact) with typical Sandler juvenalia: flatulence, liposuction flaps, nymphomaniacal neighbors, transsexual coworkers, soulless plastic Maxim-model women (which, sadly, includes Kate Beckinsale as Newman's wife) and gratuitous guest appearances by demon hellbeast (and Sandler bud) Rob Schneider.

The basic script by Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe, is a be-careful-what-you-wish-for premise structured very much like the duo's previous, Capra-flavored Bruce Almighty, but since Sandler and his peeps DIDN'T get their grimy paws on that one, it actually was genuinely sweet, funny, insightful and even kind of profound; this variant is mostly just mean-spirited, offensive and in places rather hateful.

Wonderful Life's George Bailey may have been an imperfect human being (that was one of the elements of Capra's film that made it work so beautifully), and he was certainly capable of such hurtful acts as unjustly chewing out his youngest daughter's hapless, well-intentioned schoolteacher--but good old George would NEVER have taken such sadistic glee in torturing the next door neighbor's kid.

(Newman actually brings him and ANOTHER child to tears several times throughout the movie; this passes for a running gag, and in this case "gag" is the perfect word to describe it.) Shockingly, Click is not Sandler's worst movie by far: it DOES have some genuinely intriguing futuristic production design in its later scenes; the comparison made of Newman to the Lucky Charms leprachaun is quite thought-provoking; Henry Winkler and Julie Kavner as Newman's parents lend a high level of charm and class to the movie that's highly undeserved but thank God it's there; Ben Hoffman as his grown-up son brings so much dignity and conviction to his role that he seems to have come in from an entirely different movie, and admittedly I laughed out loud the first three times the family dog mounted the stuffed duck before the movie's dozens of endless variations on that joke made me really sorry I did.

I can't give nominal director Frank Coraci (The Wedding Singer) credit for any of these nominal virtues because, let's face it, Sandler is the true auteur of most of his movies and Coraci, Dennis Dugan, Steven Brill and Peter Segal are merely sycophantic yes-men whose major function is to prevent the players from (unintentionally) bumping into each other.

Give Sandler the rights to Doestoyefsky's The Brothers Karamazov and he'll turn it into a celebration of brain-dead psychotic adolescent rage; if I had my very own magic remote, I'd use it to erase the tapes in my head of most of his previous work and to block out any future Sandler films in which Sandler DOESN'T relinquish total creative control to Paul Thomas Anderson (Punch-Drunk Love) or James L.

Brooks (Spanglish) or any other artist who's aware of Sandler's undeniable talent and knows how to pull it out of the pool of excrement with which Sandler, left to his own devices, repeatedly displays such infantile fascination.