Best ever Hollywood movie

Rating: 10/10 (16 December 2006)

CLICK is a flawed film, but better than I thought it would be. Adam Sandler plays Michael Newman, experiencing the pathos that come trying to meet the simultaneous and contrary demands of a family and a career.
The theme is a familiar one: a good-hearted schmo succeeds professionally (if only marginally) at the expense of his personal life.
Only the execution is new, albeit sometimes clumsy, which developed almost seamlessly from Newman's desire for a single remote unit to control the various electronic components and appliances in his home. Denoting just how detached he was from what went on under his own roof, he's unable to distinguish which remote control unit works what appliance, and he's turning the light on when he wants to change the channel on the TV. In a moment's frustration with his lack of control, he impulsively runs out late at night to find one of those universal remotes. In a store selling beds and bedding, he discovers a door in the far back that leads to a storage area. Here he meets Morty (Christopher Walken), a man sporting a lab coat and an eccentric hairdo that combined suggests he's some sort of inventor or scientist. He gives Michael the remote he wants, which turns out to be much, much more than a device for controlling appliances. Michael accidentally discovers it controls all aspects of his life, permitting him to jump backwards in time, with chapter marks, a fast forward, pause, and so on, and even including a commentary track by James Earl Jones.
This was basically a science fiction movie, sort of a comedic time-travel piece, with the remote control unit lending it a stamp of originality. The premise was cute enough to pique my curiosity as to where the filmmakers would go with it, but I remained peripherally aware at first that I was interested only in the novelty of the idea. Once he got comfortable with the power, he began to use it for intentionally comic effect. He used the color controller to give himself a tan, for instance; he changed the aspect ratio of his boss during a sexual harassment orientation. These were the parts that felt like filler to me, as they lent nothing to anything, so the film at that point seemed like it was lacking something, that the filmmakers knew it, and they were hoping to hide it.
You are lulled into thinking the rest of the movie will be more of the same shtick. However, once it got past these minor flaws, it got back to the question it hung its novelty on, of how to balance the demands of a career and the obligations to one's family, and when the former is meant to facilitate the latter but is having the opposite result. Sometime after the first hour, they get right down to the effect of the remote on his real issues. The remote has a feature that anticipates his use of the functions based on his previous uses, and it begins fastforwarding on its own, and the story becomes poignant. For me, this is where it succeeded, and I was reminded of a dozen other sci-fi-fantasy stories like it, which placed the novelty of some situation in the context of something you can identify with (like THE FAMILY MAN, with Nicholas Cage, for instance). I'm almost embarrassed to admit I was touched to the verge of tears. Yes, it's true. I was.
While this is not a movie that will rank highly on either kind of list for me (worst or best), half of me liked the movie while the snobby half enjoyed some haughtiness at my lower half's expense. And Kate Beckinsale is just gorgeous throughout, even as a comfortably 50-year-old woman. At bottom it's s a gimmicky film which tied up nicely with a very warm feel-good ending. At the beginning I had some misgivings that it would be JUST the gimmick in a situation comedy: I was alarmed by something that happened in the bedding store that make me sigh, "Oh, no. Don't tell me they're going to stoop to THAT