Poor attempt at comedy

Rating: 2/10 (23 June 2006)

What an utterly inane, poorly done, and ultimately sappy piece of tripe. At first glance, this appears to be nothing more than another Sandler low-brow comedy, with a high concept and low execution. Using a remote control that controls everything? It's comedic gold! Gold, Jerry, Gold! So much fun could be had with the idea - it's a veritable goal mine. But it squanders it. Instead, the movie tries to hammer home a painfully obvious message, and ultimately fails at both comedy and drama (yes, it was trying to go for drama).
From the opening scenes, nothing about this movie really works. The dialogue is corny and forced, the acting is terrible, the plot is utterly pointless, and the characters are completely unbelievable. There are a few laugh-out-loud moments, but they are few and far between - not really the comedy I was expecting. Instead of exploiting the idea for laughs, the movie decides to grow a heart, and tack on unneeded, cheezy scenes of emotion that just don't fit. The moral of the movie is painfully clear, but I just didn't care. Instead of making me laugh, this movie made me retch.
There are a few times that some comedic genius slips through and stands out, but as a whole, this movie was downright silly. The entire last 45 minutes was horribly done, and were not needed at all - it just stretched the movie on and on. If they had stuck to straight comedy, this would have been at least a decent attempt, but as it stands now, it's just a crappy movie.