Michael Newman (Adam Sandler) is a workaholic who ignores his far-hotter-than-he-could-possibly-get wife, Donna (Kate Beckinsale), and his two kids, in order to please his egotistical boss (David Hasselhoff ). After a tense evening, he is given a universal remote from Morty (Christopher Walken), that allows him to pause and fast-forward through life.
I had thought, or perhaps hoped, that the era of the Workaholic-learning-a-lesson film had ended years ago, but here we are again, in well traveled territory. If you’ve seen more than a few movies in your life, you’ve already seen everything this one has to offer. It is a 1950s message movie, written for a twelve-year-old audience, which makes me wonder what the producers had in mind. Anyone who is likely to find it hilarious to see Adam Sandler squatting on a desk and farting into David Hasselhoff”s face for about a minute isn’t likely to be excited by the ham-handed moralizing. And anyone who is looking for a relationship film with a strong theme is going to wonder why so much time is spent with the dog humping a stuffed duck.
For the first hour, there are more laughs than in the average Sandler movie. But those laughs aren’t as loud as they should be. It’s hard not to come up with something mildly funny when working with a man who has a remote control to the world. And that’s all they did come up with: mildly funny routines. Any three randomly chosen twelve-year-olds could have written the script and done as well. That doesn’t mean it’s not humorous to see Michael mute the dog or fast-forward through sex. But bring a cleverer than normal twelve-year-old to the theater and he can feed you better material scene by scene.
After the Three Stooges-like hour, the movie takes a turn into Capra-land. After establishing that this is slapstick silliness, everything becomes serious. There are still a few outlandish jokes (Michael Jackson’s clone suing him for sexual molestation) which now feel out of place, but most of the time is spent on thumping the message against the side of your head (it’s not deep enough to actually enter your brain). Family is good. Don’t fast-forward (i.e. waste) your life. Yeah. Got it.
Sandler does an adequate job, though everyone in the film is better. Walken always makes me smile. He’s just going through the motions, but he’s more entertaining when half asleep than most actors are at the top of their game. Hasselhoff is a surprise, in a movie in desperate need of anything unexpected. He easily steals every scene he’s in, creating layers of obnoxiousness. He’s got a new career playing jerks if he wants it.
The question that kept going through my mind as I was semi-entertained by this somewhat funny flick was: what is Kate Beckensale doing as the third-banana, generic wife? Both her talent and charm are wasted. If she’s going slumming, at least she should have a lead role. But outside of looking far cuter than kittens, pandas, and an entire college cheerleading squad combined, Beckensale does nothing. She’s furniture. Beautiful furniture, but still replaceable by a nice chair or any of a thousand young actresses. The woman who made Emma and Cold Comfort Farm so amusing should have better things to do with her time.
Click doesn’t make much sense, even after accepting the premise. Why does he fast-forward through everything instead of putting the world on pause? Michael could have done so much more, but the film’s message needed him to keep hitting that one button. But this isn’t a movie that is aided by thought. Your mind will only get in the way. Enjoy what it has to offer. You’re unlikely to remember it in a few years.