MOVIES: Click (Frank Coraci, 2006)

Click is two different movies, each of which would be moderately entertaining on its own, but the two don't mix well at all.

The first half is a standard Adam Sandler man-boy-idiot comedy, in which Sandler's Michael Newman is an architect with an overly demanding boss (David Hasselhoff), a gorgeous wife (Kate Beckinsale), and two movie-cute kids. Michael ventures into the "Way Beyond" room at the local Bed Bath & Beyond -- can you say product placement, boys and girls? I knew you could -- in search of a universal remote, hoping to simplify something in his hectic life. He's given "the newest technology" in remotes by Marty (Christopher Walken, who seems to be auditioning for a particularly wacko version of Willy Wonka).

And this sets up Movie #1, in which Sandler uses his remote (which allows him to fast-forward, pause, mute, etc. his actual life) to skip through colds, arguments with Donna, and family dinners. If you like this sort of thing (and I do, as an occasional thing), Sandler does it as well as anyone, and scattered among the cheap jokes are a few clever ideas; a joke involving the color adjustment on the remote is nicely done.

But the remote has a mind of its own, and it's not long before it starts skipping Michael through life of its own accord, setting up Movie #2, which gets all sentimental and heartwarming in a Frank Capra-wannabe kind of way, pounding home the lessons that life must be enjoyed while it happens and family is the most important thing. Sandler isn't going to be stealing roles from Tom Hanks any time soon, but he pulls off the emotional moments well enough. (He really is a better actor than most give him credit for; he was quite good in Spanglish, and deserved an Oscar nomination for Punch-Drunk Love.)

There's much fine work in the supporting cast. Walken is, as always, entertaining and gives dialogue his unique spin. Henry Winkler and Julie Kavner are charming as Sandler's parents, and there's some remarkable digital work to de-age them in flashbacks to Michael's childhood, an especially challenging task since we have such vivid memories of the younger Winkler and Kavner from their TV sitcom days. (Well, at least those of us who are 40-ish and up have vivid memories; Sandler's core audience of 15-year-old boys, maybe not so much.) There's also superb old-age makeup by Rick Baker as the movie leaps into Sandler's future.

(An aside: The movie stumbles into a common flaw of stories set in the not-too-distant future -- over-changing things. Violins, for instance, have remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years. So when we see, in a scene set roughly 20 years from now, a quartet playing skinny metallic pseudo-violins and -cellos, someone is trying too hard to be futuristic.)

Click isn't an awful movie, and there is much to enjoy about it. But the chasm between fart jokes and It's a Wonderful Life is wide, indeed, and the screenplay (by Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe) doesn't quite bridge it successfully; the movie's shift of gears isn't well prepared, and the contrast between the two halves was too jarring for me.