Worth a watch but could have been better

Rating: 6/10 (27 August 2008)

This is a pretty difficult movie to surmise, as it doesn't quite work and it's quite hard to say why.
The plot has Adam Sandler as a busy working father who discovers a remote control with the power to bend space and time. The movie fuses elements of comedy, drama, and fantasy, but none of these elements are particularly powerful enough to make this a really good movie.
The comedy isn't belly laugh hilarious, but than again it's not totally devoid of laughs. There certainly enough of the fart-gag type humor you would expect from an Adam Sandler film, but some other nice comic touches as well.
The elements of fantasy and science fiction have interesting possibilities but the whole premise hasn't been properly thought through. The remote control devise seems to have no rules which ends up being confusing.
The drama is probably the films strongest card, and at the center of this is Sandler's time demanding career threatening to cost him his family. The Christmas Carol style out of body journeys through time are pretty insightful and moving, and in the end it's pretty nice redemption story.
Fans of the insane acting stylings of Christoper Walken are in for a treat, and it's good to see 'the Hoff' doing nice work in an extended supporting role. I can't confess to seeing all his stuff but looking back at his career this could well be the best thing he has ever done.
There are a lot of threads running through this film, and a good film in there somewhere. When put on paper the film is probably less than the sum of it's parts, but when compared to other Adam Sandler vehicles it's actually pretty good. If it had more focus in the story, stronger direction, and dropped about 20 minutes of the weaker comedy I think it would have been a whole lot better, possibly even very good.