A great comedy

Rating: 10/10 (10 February 2019)

I'm not always an Adam Sandler fan but this movie is pretty funny. Basically he's a middle-class schlub who isn't getting ahead in life so he gets a universal remote to control his life. Things go well originally, as he rises up the ranks of the architecture firm. But then the remote goes on autopilot, making him miss years upon years of his life.
In the time between the skips he becomes an absolute jerk, not caring about anyone around him. While those in the actual time see him as a jerk, when he comes out of the lapses he is responding perfectly rationally...but those in the actual time see it as weird or meaning he has mental problems. He goes through his whole life, his wife leaves him and re-marries, his kids get older, and he dies. It brings a tear to your eye even though there is a lot of laughs. Luckily "Morty" (a parody of Marty from Back to the Future?), an angel, gives him a second chance. He takes it, vowing to be better person, a more loving father, and the film closes.
There is more than what I have just mentioned. This movie sort of brings time travel up to the present, apart from being uncontrollable like in The Time Traveler's Wife (2009), from a car accident like in Turn Back the Clock (1933), or through self-hypnosis in Somewhere in Time (1980). At the same time, perhaps it is a bit too easy for it to be in a remote. Even so, I like this conception of time travel in the consumerist society of the U$, as his annoyances could be felt by many. I can't remember any people of color in this film, so I'd venture to say it is a white man's fantasy since time travel movies in general usually involve white men traveling forward or backward in time, just as it happens in Back to the Future (1985) and The Time Machine (2002).
By the end of the film, I guess the lesson is to live your life, not skip around, and put family before your job? Not sure what the takeaway is at the end but this movie was definitely enjoyable.