| CLUNK : Frank Coraci's 'Click' [2/10] |
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| Tuesday, 26 September 2006 | |
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warning : contains spoilers As a comedy, the latest Adam Sandler vehicle Click is especially unroadworthy: ineptly writen and drably directed, it's dismaying witless and consistently mirthless. But as a suffocatingly nightmarish morality-tale (which presumably wasn't what its makers intended) the picture isn't without force or interest. Until, that is, a last-reel cop-out which sees scriptwriters Steven Koren and Mark O'Keefe opting for the most jawdroppingly shameless of supposedly rug-pulling denouements: with a straight face, they ask us to swallow the long-discredited 'twist' of "and then I woke up and it was all a dream." For the viewer, however, there's no chance of such an unlikely happy ending once they've endured the interminable Click - that snappily monosyllabic title jarringly at odds with a picture so sloppily constructed and paced it feels drastically longer than its actual 100-odd minutes. Sandler is Michael Newman, a reasonably successful architect employed by a thriving Manhattan practice. He has a gorgeous, loving wife (Kate Beckinsale), two charming young children (Joseph Castanon, Tatum McCann), a pleasant detached suburban home complete with dopey labrador, and a pair likeably daffy parents (Henry Winkler, Julie Kavner). But he's under pressure at work from his smarmy boss (David Hasselhoff) and feels guilty at having to put family second in his list of priorities. A solution appears from an unlikely source when a wild-haired inventor (Christopher Walken) gives him a 'Universal Remote Control' with supernatural powers - allowing Michael to pause, rewind, or even fast-forward his life. The gizmo proves a short-term blessing - but rapidly turns into a long-term curse, as it 'learns' Michael's 'preferences' and starts zapping him onward through time with increasingly disturbing consequences... The basic idea for Click, while far from original (It's A Wonderful Life plus Back to the Future plus Bruce Almighty - with a dash of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), isn't a bad one as 'high-concept' comedies go. And the cast-list is packed with reliable names like Walken, Winkler (how odd to see the Fonz playing a kindly Grandpa), Kavner, Sean Astin (as Michael's son's swimming-coach), Jennifer Coolidge (as Beckinsale's noticeably older, blowsier best pal). As a shockhaired cross between Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown, Henry Travers' Clarence and Robert De Niro's Louis Cyphre (from Angel Heart), Walken manages to put his usual idiosyncratic polish on the functional-at-best dialogue - he opens his first scene with the all-too-apt line "Something stinks like stale French-Fries," his second with the even-more-fitting "Nobody's laughing at you, Michael." But the rest of the supporting cast struggle to make much of the inferior material they're given to work with. Sandler, meanwhile, seems content to go through the motions - occasionally descending to a kind of sub-sub-sub-Jerry Lewis form of mugging, and displaying only the most fleeting flashes of whatever it was Paul Thomas Anderson found within him during Punch-Drunk Love - which is especially unfortunate as we're told Michael appears to operate on 'autopilot' during those dull sections of his life which he chooses to 'skip.' Coraci, O'Keefe and Koren seem equally 'zoned out': though the (incessant, too-loud) score suggests that what's intended is a broad comedy, the laugh count is depressingly low, with many of the 'jokes' either unfunnily puerile (several involve children swearing and dogs shagging, and there's one stunningly tasteless quip implying a kind of incestuous fellatio), casually misogynist - or, at especially grim moments, a combination of both: the less said about the character of Michael's frowsy secretary Alice, gamely played by the hapless Rachel Dratch, the better. As a cautionary tale about getting your priorities right ("family... comes... first!") however, Click is - until that lame finale - at times hideously persuasive, although it's arguably a bit rich of Sandler to be lecturing audiences about the perils of "chasing the pot of gold" when he himself has long since demanded so many millions of dollars as payment for his services. As it is, Click's central gimmick (which turns out to be rather less satisfyingly developed than, say, the similarly time-hopping conceit in The Butterfly Effect) leaves everyone involved very much hostages to fortune: it isn't hard to imagine disgruntled cinemagoers pretending to pressing the "off" button, while those who choose to check out Click in the privacy of their own home may soon find themselves deploying their own remote for real. Neil Young 27th September, 2006 CLICK : [2/10] : USA 2006 : Frank CORACI : 107 mins (BBFC timing) seen at Empire cinema, Gate complex, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 26th September 2006 - press show |
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