When you start thinking, hey, this isn't funny anymore, TURN IT OFF

Rating: 3/10 (25 December 2006)

For the first half hour or so, Click is a very funny and charming movie. My initial reaction was, hmmm, why did this get bad reviews, it's that rarity; an Adam Sandler movie that is more about charm and fun than lowbrow jokes.
Perhaps a third of the way through though, shortly after Sandler gets the remote that is the movie's central gimmick, it just sort of stopped being funny. Jokes became increasingly low brow and mean-spirited, although hints of what was to come came early on, most notably in the mean-spirited delight the movie takes in Sandler's petty cruelties to an obnoxious neighbor kid.
By the last third, the movie dropped humor altogether in favor of bathos and treacly sentimentality as it hammered home its moral. The movie clearly wants to be Capraesque, but it fails to have noticed that Capra's films, even at their most serious and sentimental, would always toss in a few light touches.
The problem is not the premise, which is pretty good, or even the moral, which is a fair one and which comes naturally out of the premise. The problem is the film is just badly done.
Since a third of it is actually pretty funny, it might seem harsh to only give it 3 stars out of ten, but if a movie is going to be this awful I feel it shouldn't fool you into thinking it's good and then falling apart so completely. If I only judged the first third I'd give this a 7, but the second third deserves a 4 and the last third deserves a 2 if I'm feeling generous.