I would have liked that remote to turn the screen off...

Rating: 5/10 (18 August 2006)

"Click" is Adam Sandler's latest attempt at making us laugh. Last year I saw "Spanglish" and said that Sandler's true acting talent emerges when someone else but him has written a screenplay, and when someone other than his usual directors has taken a project. Frank Coraci directed Sandler in "The Wedding Singer": good; he directed Sandler in "The Waterboy": regular; he has just directed "Click": awful. Maybe it's not Coraci's fault, but "Spanglish" had inspired me to watch Sandler in a different wayThat illusion has vanished.
"Click" plays with different genres and it aims at different targets, but it ultimately gets confusing and it ends up playing the audienceBadly. I saw this film with a friend of mine who had already seen it: "It made me cry", he told me; and I got excited because of the "Spanglish" situation. I couldn't cry because it isn't a drama; and I couldn't even laugh because it is not a good comedy (although pay attention at a commentary of Colin Farrell: the best).
The story is very similar to things everyone has seen before: it's about a guy who is able to go forth and back in time as he pleases, and his present life changes because of it. This time, the element is a remote control given to Sandler by a very classy Christopher Walken; and I don't know I f the movie could have been bearable without Walken.
So Sandler's character has his wife and beautiful kids but doesn't pay much attention to them because of his job and because he wants to become partner of the company he works in. Soon, he meets Morty (Walken) who gives him this remote control; and Sandler starts playing with it, not without Morty telling him that it could be dangerousAnd it is.
At first, things go bad for Sandler and we worry about his situation. But you know those films where the screenplay plays so much with the viewer that you just can't believe any more of it? It could have been like that during "The Butterfly Effect", but Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber handled it well. Here Steve Koren and Mark O' Keefe take it too far; they wrote "Bruce Almighty": what happened to them?
The reason why I said Sandler so many times above and didn't say his character's name is because he is playing himself: he's playing Adam Sandler. Where did the nice guy of "50 first Dates" get lost? What ever occurred to the quarterback of "The Longest Yard" or the charming cook of "Spanglish", which I dared to say had been his best portrayal? I don't have the answer.
His female lead, Kate Beckinsale, looks so beautiful but appears completely underused as his wife. On the children's side, Joseph Castanon (whom I met in "Ghost Whisperer") is always likable to watch; and the adults are a Sean Astin who is prepared for better things than this; and two solid comedic supporting roles in the flesh of David Hasselhoff and Jennifer Coolidge.
And how can I forget about Christopher Walken; who without doing much saves the rainiest of days: "Man on Fire", "The Rundown", "Gigli" and most notably "Joe Dirt"