The Week in Entertainment
Click
By Randy Moser
Lament the middle-age mook. Where do you go at 39 when you're specialty is toilet humor?
The answer, of course, is Click.
Click stars Adam Sandler as Michael Newman, a workaholic architect who never has enough time. The big promotion always seems a day away, and he can't seem to fit his young wife and two adorable children and work into his life. One day he storms out of his house looking for a remote control to synchronize his television, stereo, fan and garage door.
The only store open is a Bed, Bath, & Beyond, and he stumbles onto a secret hallway where he meets a strange elfin store clerk played by Christopher Walkin who offers him a very special remote control.
**Spoiler: The rest of the film is either a dream sequence or a strange morality tale. If you don't see this coming the minute Sandler is given the remote, I'm taking you off the hook by telling you up front. Christopher Walkin, fat women, pinwheels and dwarves are Hollywood clues that we're not in Kansas anymore. Now you can sit back and enjoy the film. End spoiler.**
The remote control allows Michael to control time. He can rewind to watch earlier episodes of his life, stop time, effectively freezing everyone in their spots, or fast forward time, which puts him into automatic pilot. As is true of virtually every story like this - The Lord of the Rings, Bruce Almighty, the parable of the magic ring of Gyges in Plato's Republic - the true conflict is between man and his conscience.
If you were given ultimate power would you revert to your inner juvenile delinquent and watch the busty jogger undulate in slow motion? What sort of revenge would you exact on the man who steals your wife away or the mean little kid who makes fun of your son?
Can the mook be rehabilitated? Can he learn to be patient, to accept delayed gratification?
The remote begins to go haywire before Michael can grapple with these moral issues. It begins to make decisions based on his boorish behavior, forcing him to see the limits of his goal-obsessed perspective. It skips through domestic arguments and keeps going past the moments of intimacy, speeds him past family celebrations to hollow promotions and robs him of satisfaction.
A lot of people will be offended by Click's inoffensiveness. This is, after all, an Adam Sandler film and we've come to expect a high level of crudeness from this guy. Straight-shooting, politically incorrect fans of the genre will see this film as a sell-out.
On the other hand, highbrow audiences that expect to be spared crass scenes in their chick flicks are also likely to be put off. If you're old enough to appreciate the film's bittersweet message, you're really too old to get into Sandler in a fat suit.
So Sandler has created a film that's destined to be universally disliked, which is too bad because there are some wonderful moments in this film.
