Click (2006)

The calendar year of 2006 saw the release of some pretty bleak movies, from Children of Men to Babel to The Dead Girl. While featuring varying degrees of redemption at the end, none of these films would exactly be found flickering in the background at a roller skating rink. And yet, for many more reasons than one, by far the most depressing movie to hit theaters in 2006 was the Adam Sandler/Christopher Walken magical remote control comedy, Click. Obviously, Click is a bummer on account of it being an inept, unfunny mess that will sour your love of comedy forever and ever. But it's also sad for another reason: almost by accident, Click is a sober meditation on lives wasted and opportunities missed, its message a more real depiction of human sadness and suffering than at least two of the three movies mentioned above.

Click stars Adam Sandler and Kate Beckinsale as Michael and Donna Newman, a middle-class couple with two adorable tykes, all of whom live in a house with a white picket fence in the town of Suburbsville, America. With stunning economy of dialogue, the film's opening scene -- within the first eleven lines, in fact -- finds Michael attempting to operate his television remote, but instead he starts up a remote control car, turns on a ceiling fan, and opens the garage door. I guess the remote that increases the amount of cinematic nuance in a feature film is lost somewhere underneath a couch cushion.

Michael leaves for his job at an architecture firm, but not before his wife reminds him to be on time for his son's swim meet later that day. Once at the office, Michael's diabolical boss, Ammer (David Hasselhoff), treats him like the middle manager he is, telling him flatly that if he wants to make partner in the company he will have to work on July 4 instead of going on a camping trip with his family. Charged to watch an architecture documentary that night (indicating Michael has a LOT of catching up to do and should probably go to work on weekends and Christmas as well), Michael tires of trying to navigate his many remotes and sets off for Bed, Bath, and Beyond to buy a universal.

Once inside the store, Michael finds a back section with a small sign reading "Way Beyond." There, he meets Morty (Walken), who hooks him up with a universal remote that...actually controls the universe. Michael can go back to any time in his life as well as going forward and backwards in his current reality. He can also fast forward through the more bothersome aspects of his life, including showers, traffic jams, family dinners, fights with his wife, illnesses, and waiting for promotions. Michael conjures Morty to ask what happens to him while he's in fast forward mode, and we learn that he goes on "auto pilot." He's there, but he won't be "the life of the party."

Things seem to be going fine for a while because, I mean, what possible comic consequences could there be? Michael is zipping to and from work, slowing down only to watch a young buxom woman run in slow motion. But when Act Two gets underway, Michael finds out that the remote is even smarter than he is. It learns his behavior and fast forwards through things Michael has skipped before. It's the same feature that won't allow you to stop taping Friends in Spanish because you once accidentally told your Tivo you wanted to watch Sabado Gigante. He thus starts to miss all family dinners, all showers, and all fights with his wife. He also loses ten years waiting for a promotion and another six while he gets over cancer. At one point, he wakes up and his father has died. Michael doesn't remember a thing.

Death. Regret. Crushing suburban malaise. Click deals with all these topics, and tackles them in a more real, less arch fashion than American Beauty and other standard bearers of death, regret, and crushing suburban malaise. But that doesn't mean Click is a light comedy with a dark message. Tonally, the film is so out of whack that it seems its inherent core of sadness took the filmmakers completely by surprise. Click compensates for this misery by boomeranging in the other direction, hard. During its lighter moments, Click finds Michael a) watching a series of dogs hump a stuffed duck for no apparent reason and b) passing gas in his boss's paused face for about thirty consecutive seconds. If anyone thinks these moments provide a comedic counterbalance to Michael lying on the ground of a cemetery, lamenting his inability to remember the death of his father, they have got another think coming. Also not brightening the mood is Michael's mid-twenty-first century death scene (you heard me), in which Michael lies on the ground outside of St. Future's Hospital in the pouring rain, wailing to his son not to let his life pass him by. That scene is actually one worth watching.

Click seems to exist in a world where Michael is the only person with a job. His son's swim meet takes place under blazing bright noonday sun on a weekday, but none of the other fathers had any trouble making it. The son's swim coach (played by Sean Astin, whose entire character in the movie is "I wear a red Speedo") pays more attention to the son than Michael himself, which is why Donna eventually divorces her husband and marries him instead. Take that, Michael Newman! That'll teach people in movies to go to work and try to make a better life for themselves and their families!

In a movie whose main character is a television remote control, even the character of Mr. Remote doesn't stick to a steadfast set of rules. Michael uses the remote to change his skin color to make it look like he has a tan, and everyone notices. And yet, moments later, he attempts to humiliate his boss by changing Ammer's size and shape during a presentation, but nobody can see it besides Michael. Worst of all, Michael goes back in time to relive the last time he saw his father, when he was too absorbed in his work to see him out the door one final time. As his father leaves his office for the last time, a remorseful modern-day Michael hits pause to look at dad and tell him that he loves him. He rewinds the scene and does it again. He rewinds the scene and does it again. He rewinds the...WAIT A SECOND. THAT THING HAS A REWIND BUTTON? Can't he just rewind back to the time before he made his first remote-related decision? Can't he just...oh, never mind.

In the end, Michael figures out a way to start over and, this time, he pledges to appreciate the things he has in life. He tells his boss he's not going to work on July 4, which means he's never going to make partner. Which means he'll live the agonizingly frustrating life of a middle manager long enough to come to resent his family for taking him away from the passion he felt for his work. He is going to end up hating his wife so hard. No matter how you look at it, they're going to get divorced anyway.

Told you it was sad.

Recommendation: I'd say fast forward to the last thirty minutes, but I'm TERRIFIED OF MY REMOTE CONTROL.