Having been roundly castigated for MR DEEDS, his attempt to remake a classic film, Frank Capra’s MR DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, Adam Sandler has taken a more oblique, but no more successful, approach to remaking A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Instead of the Yule Season, it’s the Fourth of July. Instead of a miser who shuns humanity, it’s workaholic architect Michael (Sandler) who sacrifices his family for his ambition. Instead of three ghosts, there are Christopher Walken and a universal remote control, as in, remotely controlling the universe. Walken works, sublimely inhabiting a film that is only tangentially related to the one in which Sandler and company appear. His is the feisty buoyancy of someone in a happier place. The rest is an uneasy mix of sloppy sentiment and genuine mean-spiritedness that Sandler tries, and fails, to conflate with a schizophrenic performance.
Michael is a harried associate working for an upscale architectural concern run by David Hasselhof, who preens his way through as a one-trick joke that isn’t funny. In order to make partner and hit the financial jackpot, Michael does things like miss swim meets and cancel family trips at the last minute, leaving the work of raising his two adorable kids Ben and Samantha (Joseph Castanon and Tatum McCann) to his preternaturally taut and toned wife, Donna (Kate Beckinsale), whose hair is perpetually styled in the careful manner that the mother of two kids under 10 without a nanny would be hard-pressed to maintain in real life. They squabble a lot about the way things are, but Michael is sure that once he’s promoted, it will all be worth it for him and for his family. And in the meantime, he gets by swigging cough syrup for a nagging cough, being inordinately amused by teasing the neighbor’s kid, and scarfing down snack cakes while watching his dog bond inappropriately with a large plush duck. Late one night, after being stumped yet again by the array of remotes in his house (ceiling fan, television, garage, toy helicopter), he betakes himself to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, the only place still open, to find a universal remote. Not finding it in bed or in bath, he stumbles across beyond, the domain of Morty (Walken), a wild-haired eccentric, who offers him exactly what he wants with the caveat that it can’t be returned.
In due course, Michael discovers that hitting pause, doesn’t just pause the video he’s watching, it also pauses his wife. Hitting mute spares him the ranting of his wife’s best friend (Jennifer Coolidge), expounding on her latest foray into victimhood. Hitting fast-forward saves him having to deal with traffic, and by hitting the next chapter option, he skips ahead through dull dinners family dinners with the wife, kids, and parents (Henry Winkler and Julie Kavner). The menu key lets him take a peek at his past and the “making of Michael” featurette is pretty much what you’d expect.
Never mind that the joke about “beyond” in the store’s name has already been exploited by television’s “Family Guy”. That’s the least of this film’s problems, but it is emblematic of its retread approach. Sandler trots out all his usual tropes, from an extensive fart into his boss’ face after hitting the pause button, to zooming in on some bazooms (not his wife’s) after hitting the slow-motion option. There are a lot of bazooms on display in CLICK, even, at one point, on Sandler himself. Don’t ask. Pause comes in handy later when he wants to kick a rival (speedo-sporting Sean Astin) in the gusset, as it were.
There is nothing to liven up the generic lesson that Michael will learn the hard way about what he’s missing. No surprises in the way the panoply of sappiness and sophomoric humor ooze across the screen. There is, however, something of a shock when Sandler attempts to out-melodrama Douglas Sirk at one point in a rain-soaked scene so corny that even the punch line that never comes wouldn’t have helped make any sense of it. There is only slightly less of a shock at the special-effects make-up used on the hapless Winkler and Kavner during a rewind to Michael’s childhood. Who thought that making them look like cut-rate waxworks would be the way to go there?
CLICK is not as bad as some of Sandler’s films have been. He aspires to more depth and that is noble. Alas, though the better angels of his nature call him, he can’t escape his imp of the perverse.
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