Almost great, but keeps chickening out

Rating: 5/10 (11 November 2011)

Ever wondered what "It's A Wonderful Life" would have been like if it contained large amounts of obvious gross-out comedy? Wonder no more, just go rent this one. "Click" can be extremely touching and heart-warming at times, but then David Hasselhoff gets farted on and you're back to square one. Sandler's character feels how his life has slipped away, remorsefully thinks about all the things he missed but then screw it, let's randomly throw in three dozen liposuction jokes. The movie's often just way too Hollywood for its own good, it has a lot of potential but the makers never have the guts to be truly unpredictable. I guess the fact that's it's such an uneven film wouldn't bother me if the humor was actually funny, but as I said even that's somewhat of a letdown. The material is all just so uninspired and stale: humping pets, fat jokes, kids getting hit in the face with something, old people talking dirty, some of it even seems like rejected material from Rob Schneider movies (if that even exists). Thank God Christopher Walken drops by for a few scenes, pretty much every laugh I remember came from him. The ending is pretty much the final nail in the coffin, but thankfully it also pretty much sums up the entire movie for me: good story with lots of potential, but Hollywood turns it into a boring, predictable, risk-less snoozefest. What a waste.