Click (2006 film)

Click is a 2006 American comedy drama film directed by Frank Coraci, written by Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe, both of whom produced with Jack Giarraputo, Neal H. Moritz, and Adam Sandler, who also starred in the lead role. The film co-stars Kate Beckinsale, Christopher Walken, Henry Winkler, David Hasselhoff, Julie Kavner, and Sean Astin. The film is based on "The Magic Thread", a folk tale included in The Book of Virtues. Sandler plays Michael Newman, a workaholic family man who acquires a magical universal remote that enables him to control reality. Kate Beckinsale stars as his wife Donna and Christopher Walken as Morty, the eccentric stranger who gives Michael the remote.
Filming began in late 2005 and was finished by early 2006. Sony Pictures Releasing, under Columbia Pictures, released Click in the United States on June 23, 2006 and received mixed reviews. It was made on a budget of $82.5 million and grossed $240.7 million. It was nominated for Best Makeup at the 79th Academy Awards (it lost the award to Pan's Labyrinth). This makes Click the only Sandler-produced film (as of 2025) to be nominated for an Academy Award.
In 2006, architect Michael Newman is consistently taken advantage of by his overbearing boss, John Ammer, and often prioritizes work over his wife Donna and their children Ben and Samantha. One night, unable to keep track of multiple remote controls, he visits Bed Bath & Beyond to buy a universal remote and stumbles around various departments before falling asleep on a display bed. Upon waking up, he enters the "Beyond" door and accepts a free remote control from a man named Morty, who warns him that the remote cannot be returned.
Michael learns that the remote cannot just be used to control electronics, but it can also control the universe. He uses it at work to cause light-hearted mischief and skip past minor inconveniences such as illnesses and arguments. Morty tells him that during these times, his body is on "auto-pilot", going through the motions of everyday life while his mind skips ahead.
Anticipating that Ammer will promote him, Michael spends lavishly on himself and his family, only for Ammer to reveal that he will have to wait several months. Feeling like he has disappointed his family, he uses the remote to skip ahead in order to get the promotion but discovers that he has missed out on an entire year of his life. In 2007, he learns that he is in marriage counseling with Donna, his children have grown up, and the family dog, Sundance, has died, and a small dog named Peanut has replaced him. The remote, having learned Michael's preferences, begins to time-skip automatically. No matter what Michael did with the remote, he tries to destroy it, throw it in the bin, and even discard it, but each attempt fails. Later, he tries to return the remote to Morty since he had enough with it since the remote started to time-skip, but Morty refuses to take it back because it is non-returnable, making good in his warning.
After sneaking off to work (without changing or driving) the next day, Michael tries to prevent the remote from skipping ahead. However, when Ammer suggests that Michael may one day become the CEO, he says he would like that to happen. This causes the remote to unexpectedly fast-forward ten years to the future. In 2017, he is now the wealthy but morbidly obese CEO of the company, his children are moody (and in Ben's case, overweight) teenagers, and Donna has divorced him and is now dating Ben's childhood swim coach, Bill. When Michael attacks Bill out of anger, the new family dog Shaggy (who replaced Peanut) pounces on him, knocking him unconscious. The remote then fast-forwards six more years to evade the injury. In 2023, Donna recounts that Michael was diagnosed with cancer after the injury and suffered a heart attack during chemotherapy but has recovered and recently had liposuction, and she is now married to Bill.
Michael learns from a full-grown and slim Ben that his father, Ted, died of old age in 2021. Unable to go to when Ted died as he wasn't there, he uses the remote to see the last time they saw each other, learning that he coldly refused to spend time with him, devastating him. At Ted's grave, Morty reveals he is the Angel of Death, enraging Michael. Overcome with guilt and shame, he asks to go to a "good place", whereupon the remote fast-forwards to Ben's wedding in 2029. Michael collapses after overhearing Samantha refer to Bill as her father. At the hospital, Ben reveals he postponed his honeymoon due to work. Realizing that Ben is making the same mistakes he made, Michael gathers the last of his strength to follow him out of the hospital. After collapsing in the parking lot, he urges Ben to put his family first, and assures his family that he still loves them before dying.
Michael reawakens in 2006 in the bed onto which he had collapsed at Bed Bath & Beyond, and realizes that the events have all been a dream. A reformed Michael starts his friendship with the store's lonely retail associate, then goes to his parents' house and tells them that they are always welcome at his home. Then Michael goes home, where he reassures Donna, Ben, and Samantha of his affection for them, agreeing to help the family with their plans for a camping trip, and saying that he will never, ever neglect them again. As he celebrates being home, Michael finds the remote and a note sitting on his kitchen counter. He realizes his experience was not a dream, but a warning. The note is from Morty; it says, "Good guys need a break" and that he knows Michael will do the right thing this time. Michael thanks Morty, but then disposes of the remote in the trash bin, and goes to enjoy the company of his family.
On July 23, 2003, Sony Pictures purchased Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe's spec script Click for $1.75 million, with plans for it to be an Adam Sandler film produced by Revolution Studios, Columbia Pictures, and Neal H. Moritz's company Original Film; the purchase occurred as Bruce Almighty (2003), also written by Koren and O'Keefe, had grossed $236 million domestically in its two-month run. Click was the second comedy Moritz produced for Columbia, after Not Another Teen Movie (2001). Although Sony planned filming to begin in April 2004 after Sandler finished shooting Spanglish (2004), that was postponed for Koren and O'Keefe to rewrite the script under the supervision of Juan José Campanella, who was announced as director in May 2004. However, he was replaced by Frank Coraci, who directed the Sandler films The Wedding Singer (1998) and The Waterboy (1998), in March 2005. Executive producer Tim Herlihy also revised the script. Christopher Walken joined the cast on February 23, 2005.
Imageworks began working on the film's digital effects in January 2006 without any research and development. While most of the effects were shot compositings, three-dimensional graphics were also made for the display on the remote and matte painting a few settings, such as the Bed and Beyond warehouse, a city background at Michael's workplace, and the winter backyard at his home; programs such as Cinema 4D and Autodesk Maya were used to produce the graphics. In order to make the fast-forwarding and rewinding look DVD-like, effects of interlaced video and scan lines "slicing through" were added. Motion control photography and green screen effects were used for scenes where Michael looked back on his life with the remote, meaning that were occasionally two Michaels in the same shot; while rotoscoping was used for the sequence where he changes the color of his face with the remote.
For scenes where Michael pauses his surroundings, the effects crew originally planned for everything to be frozen, including the environment; however, they found out this "bothered" the eye, thus switching the plan to only the characters being frozen while the environment (such as leaves on the trees being blown by wind) keeps in motion. The primary challenge for the freeze shots was sharpening the frozen characters as much as possible; there were some cases where the characters would freeze in a very active moment, causing the effects team to have to work with the motion blur that resulted from it. For instances where characters were frozen in a moment where they were still, they were filmed staying in that position for seconds so that, during post-production, the average of multiple frames would create a result absent of film grain.
Click's official website debuted in late December 2005, consisting only of the film's official trailer; C.S. Strowbridge of The Numbers called the trailer "better than I expected. It seems like Adam Sandler is serious about maturing as an actor." Other interactive features and pages were added later on, such as a plot summary, image gallery, information about the cast and crew, audio and video clips, and a Control Your Universe poster generator.
The film screened out of competition at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. The film was released in the United States on June 23, 2006, and made its UK premiere in a London Empire Cinema on September 28, 2006.
Click was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and UMD on October 10, 2006 by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. It was the first dual layer Blu-ray disc released by Sony.
Before Click's theatrical run, Strowbridge predicted, on the basis of a weak critical reception and the commercial failure of a similar dramedy attempt of Sandler's, Spanglish, Click would be one of his lesser hits; however, he suggested it could still gross up to $125 million due to its mixture of comedy and drama elements. The weekend before the film's release, Nikki Finke projected an opening weekend gross of $40 million due to similarly high numbers of prior Sony-produced Sandler comedies such as 50 First Dates (2004), Mr. Deeds (2002), and Anger Management (2003). The day before the film's theatrical start, Entertainment Weekly's Joshua Rich projected Click to have a $55 million opening weekend and a total overall gross of $210 million for its "broadly appealing" high concept and the inclusion of Adam Sandler and Kate Beckinsale in lead roles.
Domestically, Click opened in 3,749 theaters and debuted at number-one at the box office, grossing $14.5 million on its opening day and $40 million in its opening weekend; Sony distributed the film in a hugely successful year as it was their seventh number-one hit of 2006. Groups of viewers outside the young male demographic were also higher than previous Sandler films; Sony's exit polls showed 51% of attendees being female and 50% over the age of 25. Click was also one of the only three films to surpass a $10,000 theater average that weekend with $10,673; the other two were Wassup Rockers and Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, both of which played at one theater.
Strowbridge predicted that in its second weekend, Click would fall 50% and gross $20 million due to intense competition with Superman Returns. However, while Click grossed approximately that amount and got dethroned by the superhero film as expected by analysts, what wasn't anticipated was that The Devil Wears Prada would open with double the gross initially projected; as a result, The Devil Wears Prada made $27.5 million in three days and placed Click in the number-three spot.
During its third weekend, when the record-breaking Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest debuted, Click had the second-strongest hold of all competitors in the top five; it dropped only 40% from the prior weekend, while Pixar's Cars went down 38%, The Devil Wears Prada 47%, and Superman Returns 60%; Click also surpassed the $100 million mark that weekend, making it the seventh Sandler film to gross that amount. It later grossed $137.4 million in the United States and $100.3 million internationally, with a total gross of $240.7 million worldwide.
Click opened on June 30, 2006, in Australia and New Zealand to the number-one spot in both countries; in Australia, it made $2.97 million from 281 theaters, in New Zealand $853,000 from 48. The following week, it went down 34% making $1.98 million in Australia while opening to six screens in Ireland with $59,000. By the fourth week of its international run, Click had grossed a total of $10.87 million and was running in four countries, $9.51 million of the total gross being from Australia. On the weekend of August 28, 2006, Click had a strong number-one debut in Mexico, grossing $1.76 million from 418 theaters, which helped launch the film into the international top ten, specifically number seven; it grossed $4.26 million from 1,159 screens in 22 nations, bringing the international total to $25.71 million. It went down to number nine the following weekend, grossing $3.47 million from 1,104 screens in 27 countries and increasing the total gross to $31.12 million.
Rotten Tomatoes gave Click a score of 34% based on 174 reviews. The average score is a 4.78/10, and the consensus is: "This latest Adam Sandler vehicle borrows shamelessly from It's a Wonderful Life and Back to the Future, and fails to produce the necessary laughs that would forgive such imitation." Metacritic gave it a score of 45 out of 100, based on 35 reviews, which indicates "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. Peter Bradshaw opined Click was an improvement over the previous Sandler flick Mr. Deeds (2002): "It has some moments of good-natured sweetness and Adam Sandler is improving as a comic performer, though he is still conceited and opaque."
The film was criticized for its gross-out humor and unlikeable protagonist. Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote Click failed at being It's a Wonderful Life because "Michael earns none of George Bailey’s mature wisdom honestly."
When it came to positive reviews, Newsweek claimed Click was predictable as a moral story but "unusually dark, occasionally touching and pretty funny" for a Sandler comedy. Empire's Sam Toy enjoyed the film for its "smart and genuinely moving ideas," Beckinsale's performance, and a strong third act, although dismissed the script for being overstuffed, the first half of the film for Sandler being too restrained in his everyman role, and actors such as Coolidge, Hasselhoff and Walken for being put in small roles.