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.

Because I Said So (2007)

Because I Said So features a trio of likable actresses (and Piper Perabo), all of whom are written so badly they practically scream the material in a dead-end effort to make it funny. Boy, does that not work. Instead, Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore, and Lauren Graham spend 102 minutes yelling at each other, yelling at their husbands, yelling at their colleagues, and yelling. When Diane Keaton's character suddenly gets laryngitis, you're hard-pressed to believe it isn't from all of the screenplay-mandated yelling. Amazingly, her inability to speak a word still manages to yield one of the worst scenes in the film.

In Because I Said So, Diane Keaton plays Daphne, a horrendous sociopath nightmare of a mother who the movie thinks it is depicting as slightly, endearingly overbearing. Daphne has raised three successful, independent daughters all on her own, and one would expect her to feel some pride for these whomen who grew up to be 1) a psychologist, 2) a business-owner of a catering company, and 3) Piper Perabo. After all, two out of three ain't bad. Instead, she seems to exist in a century where a woman's sole purpose in life is to meet a man and get married, and to fall anywhere short of that goal means utter, abject failure for mother and daughter alike.

Daphne places a personal ad in which she intends to find the man of her dreams for her daughter, Milly (Moore). The moment this plan is set into motion, you can literally chart out the progress of the rest of the film: Daphne meets a guy she likes for Milly and a guy she doesn't like for Milly, both guys meet Milly, Milly takes to the charming musician over the stable rich guy, rich guy disappoints her, musician guy gets upset that Milly was dating two guys at once, Milly discovers her mother placed the ad, Milly gets mad, Milly wins musician guy back and grows even closer with her mother at the end. And Diane Keaton starts dating the dad from 7th Heaven. Actually, you're forgiven if you didn't call that last one.

And yet, mysteriously, no one ever tells Daphne to get out of their lives and drop dead. Daphne involves herself in the lives of her daughters to a dangerously unhealthy extent, and even when they tell her to back off, it's in a gentle, charming way that says, "Mom, we know your life has been tough, and we appreciate how you raised us as a single mother, but now you need to let us live our lives and make our own mistakes." Even more frequently, the girls thank their mother for this fever pitch of meddlesome behavior, and Milly goes so far as to take her mother in after Daphne comes down with a case of laryngitis, just so they can be confined to one place long enough to bond over orgasms (I'm not making this up).

Great actors can elevate slight material, and even the worst of scripts can be rescued by a transcendent performance. And elevating slight material is exactly what Diane Keaton does NOT do in her performance as Daphne. Such a monster of a character would be a difficult feat for anyone to pull of, but Keaton goes to her "I was adorable in the 70s" bag of tricks and pulls out the same quirky outfits she was wearing when she played Annie Hall. But these flowers and stripes and hats and pantsuits don't play in the new millennium, especially when she's asking us to take her seriously as an older, more distinguished actress. Everyone in the world wants to like Diane Keaton, and like Diane Lane in the equally atrocious Under the Tuscan Sun, the movie simply won't let us. Instead, it makes her spend the entire movie just carrying around cakes (not in boxes, across beaches and other gross outdoor locations), for no reason that is immediately obvious to the viewer.

The other characters don't make out any better. By far the most egregious scene in the movie belongs to Lauren Graham's Maggie. Graham plays a psychologist who, when faced with the need to give her codependent sister advice, tells her suicidal patient (poor Tony Hale) that she has to reschedule him. When he protests and announces that he is actually going to kill himself, Milly opens the window to Maggie's office and screams at Tony Hale that Maggie has been telling Milly for ten years that he's been threatening to kill himself, and if he's that serious about it he should just go ahead and jump out. I hope Daphne is as tenacious at finding jobs for her daughters as she is at finding men, because Maggie should have had her license revoked years ago for these Gothika-level ethical violations. Then again, it's no wonder these girls turned out so deranged. Just look at their mother.

Recommendation: If ever required to watch this movie, leap out the window Milly so helpfully opened.

Stomp the Yard (2007)

Just in case you haven't seen enough movies about how dancing can change the lives of troubled kids. There is one reason and one reason alone we gave this movie a chance, and it is called Stick It. Stick It is about gymnastics but it's the same concept, except for the part where Stick It rules and Stomp the Yard sucks.

It starts with some guy named DJ whose best friend (or brother, I'm not sure) is killed in some gang violence. He is sent to live with his rich aunt and uncle, which is quite a shock for DJ as he is used to a gritty urban setting. At this point we realized, "Isn't this The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?" The answer is yes, but with added melodrama and no jokes and more importantly NO GEOFFREY. Talk about a recipe for failure.

Stomp the Yard is also full of needless shaky-cam, but from what I could make out DJ is a total douchebag. He gets a scholarship to this great university and immediately starts shoving people out of the way so he can talk to some girl drinking water in slow motion, like if she was hydrating at 24 fps would he still be stalking her? DJ spends a lot of time rudely shoving people out of the way to reach her, including members of the "step" team, which... okay.

I will freely admit my ignorance here. This whole movie is based around "stepping" and I have no idea what that is, but it sure looked stupid to me. Nevertheless, it's pretty rude of DJ to barge through their performance while chasing this girl (her name is April), but he sure gets pissed off when they call him on it. You know why? Because he's an asshole. I was like, "Close call, lady! Drop out while you can! Stay away from this douchebag!"

Unfortunately, DJ stalks April relentlessly and I guess it's supposed to be cute or romantic. DJ follows her everywhere, tries chatting her up, gives her boyfriend dirty looks, etc. DJ sits next to her in the library and their conversation goes something like this:

DJ: Go out with me.
April: No.
DJ: Go out with me.
April: No!
DJ: Go out with me.
April: NO!
DJ: Go out with me.
April: Okay.

By the way, sitting in the library talking about the plot is the closest these kids ever come to actually attending class at this so-called university. Don't they have studying to do? Why are they dancing and arguing all the time? WHERE IS CARLTON?!

So even though April has a boyfriend who treats her just fine, she goes out with DJ and they end up getting hammered and making out on the dance floor. I can't even repsond to this because we're given no reason why these characters would ever get to this point, so for the film's sake I must assume it's some kind of hallucination.

At this point we had to stop the movie because it was too shitty even for us. I normally have a policy of never quitting a movie, to give it a fair chance, etc. But then I realized that life is short and if I kept watching Stomp the Yard it would be even shorter because I would jump off the balcony.

We even skipped ahead to see if any of the dance sequences were exciting or visually interesting in any way. And... no.

Recommendation: Watch the actual Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. That's just a good idea anyway -- what an awesome show.

Gothika (2003)

Math doesn't lie, and a full 15% of the nation's critics agreed there was something worth watching in Halle Berry's 2003 horror film, Gothika. Indeed, if you look beyond the hilarious dialogue, the exhausted horror movie tropes, and the sheer existence of Penelope Cruz, you may well discover the movie contains three whole scary moments:

1) The shot where Halle Berry's Miranda sees a girl on a dark road, gets out of her car to help, and awakens after four lost days to find herself committed to a mental institution.
2) The shot where a now crazy Miranda sees the girl from the highway for the first time after becoming crazy.
3) Penelope Cruz's brokedown face.

The other 97 minutes of Gothika do not fare quite as well.

The terrible premise: Halle Berry plays Dr. Miranda Grey, a no-nonsense psychologist who works in a mental institution that resembles an underground bondage club from the not-too-distant future. When we first pop in on Dr. Grey, she is counseling Chloe (Cruz), a patient so around-the-bend crazy she utters lines such as "You know about my stepfather. You know I cut his throat. I cut his Adam's apple in half, like a piece of fruit on a summer day, so he wouldn't say a word. I sat next to him and watched him die... slowly." After the session, Miranda walks around the building and professionally gives orders to underlings, striding confidently down the halls of the asylum. In fact, she spends approximately eight out of the film's first ten minutes just walking. Walking competently like a true mental health professional, mind you. But still, just walking. This might have been as good a time as any for the closing credits to roll.

Though Chloe's blatant admission of murder is never retracted, she is still let go at the end of the film (spoiler!). We mention this strange plot development at this point to highlight the fact that releasing a psychopath onto the streets is still, somehow, not the institution's most egregious ethical lapse. Gothika drops into farce way earlier than that, when Miranda becomes a patient at the asylum in which she had only days before been a doctor, and her former colleagues (including Robert Downey Jr., who seems to have wandered around the set holding a coffee cup until someone finally decided to put him in the movie) become her doctors.

Miranda experiences a few moments of clarity, during which she attempts to tell the doctors she isn't as crazy as she seems, that there really WAS a scary girl in the road who now possesses her. But, as Chloe warns her, "The more you try to prove them wrong, the crazier you appear." When Miranda finds a framed photograph of the girl and rants that this is the girl who stood in front of her car that night on the dark road, she is told in no uncertain terms that she could not have seen that girl. No way. Not that girl. Not on that road. Not on that night. Not possible. Can you guess why? The movie tells us in one thuddingly non-spine-tingling line: "She's dead." If you couldn't see that one coming, you too may be crazy.

Ultimately, the movie descends into one cheap scare tactic which stops working after the first time you see it. Every time the music gets scary and the lights grow dim, Miranda is once again startled by... the same dead girl, over and over again. Boo. But of course, in the end, our heroine convinces the world that she's not crazy at all and that ghosts came into our dimension and made contact with the living just so they could tell her that Charles S. Dutton is a bad guy. Or something. As the credits roll, we all walk away learning that the crazy people are really the normal ones after all. And it would be a valuable lesson the filmmakers spent $40 million teaching us, had we not already learned it during season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Gothika stands as the worst crime three Oscar nominees in one movie could perpetrate on the filmgoing public. At least until we get around to screening All the King's Men.

Recommendation: Watch the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes.

Pulse (2006)

Pulse is yet another American adaptation of a Japanese horror film. I don't want to say that with too much skepticism because I've like the Ring and Grudge movies way more than the originals (hello, minority opinion), but Pulse is just ridiculous and from what I've read it excises any social commentary offered by the original.

The terrible premise: Ghosts have found a way to enter our world through electronic devices such as computers and cell phones! Also, toilets and bedrooms!

It starts with some college kid wandering into a library that looks like the holding chambers in Saw. Like, there is clearly more wrong with this scenario than ghost attacks. This university needs some funding.

So, this kid bites the dust. Soon his girlfriend (poor Kristen Bell) is investigating along with her friends, including Christina Milian for no reason. All the friends take turns visiting Dead Friend's apartment and dying horribly until Kristen Bell hooks up with Ian Somerhalder and they figure out that ghosts have found a way to enter our world through wi-fi, cell phones, etc.

The only thing that can keep the ghosts out is red electrical tape, for no reason. So a bunch of kids start taping themselves in their rooms and hiding from the ghosts. By the way, the ghosts have, like, a special flash animation that comes up on your computer (EVEN IF YOU UNPLUG IT!) when they attack which reads, "Do you want to meet a ghost?" Apparently no one on campus can contain their curiosity and when you click on the words it starts showing you webcams of people killing themselves.

Speaking of "people," everyone campus starts disappearing from ghost attacks and all the staff are like, "It's a flu epidemic. You are imagining things, Veronica Mars." The grief couselor yells at her and says she's crazy. Another professor reads the newspaper in front of a lecture hall with five people in it. Which doesn't make much sense since Christina Milian took some shit earlier just for coming in late.

Also, there are periodic news reports assuring the public that the sudden 80% suicide rate is one big coincidence and not to worry. So, Kristen Bell and Ian Somerhalder start looking for some college kid who invented new frequencies or something, allowing the ghosts to come through. And Kristen Bell and Ian Somerhalder have both clicked on the ghosty flash animation a bunch of times and aren't dead for some reason.

At some point, everyone starts catching on that there are a lot fewer people around than there used to be and it's a national crisis. Suddenly, the movie becomes 28 Days Later and the whole world is empty except for bands of survivors struggling to reach "dead zones," which are places with no wi-fi or cell phone reception.

By the way, this whole time there are tons of ghost attacks that take place nowhere near any electronic devices, such as a public bathroom where Kristen Bell is taking a dump and sees a ghost through a crack in the door. One of her friends is attacked in a bedroom where it has been explicitly established there is no computer.

Oh, and Kristen Bell lives in a swank, cavernous apartment, which is pretty remarkable since she's studying at a university with no working lightbulbs, only sputtering flourescents that tend to shatter for no reason.

Kristen Bell and Ian Somerhalder try to crash the ghosty hard drive in a basement somewhere, but they just come back stronger. So they drive out to the country where they realize KRISTEN BELL STILL HAS CELL PHONE RECEPTION! So ghosts come out of it and try to kill them by sitting on the room and punching through the windshield and shit.

Finally, Kristen Bell does some voiceover where she explains that "our lives are different now" and humans can only live in places with no wi-fi or cell reception. She explains, "What was supposed to bring us together in fact opened the door to evil forces none of us could have imagined." I cannot believe that's the moral of the story. It's not like I'm going to spend less time on the phone because I'm scared of dying from ghosty pop-up ads.

The last shot is the kid from the opening scene standing in a window looking into camera. Or it's his ghost, I don't think it matters.

Recommendation: Skip it.