Click - TV Review

'Click manages to pull in every ridiculous and over-used plot device going and then flog them until they almost literally suck out any life left in the scene'

When I sat down on Sunday night, flicked on the TV and saw that Click was due to start in a matter of minutes I thought, 'great, a nice easy-to-watch comedy to relax with on a lazy evening'. I don't think I have ever been so wrong in my pre-watch appraisal of a film.

Let's start at the end: I don't think I have ever watched a more ill-judged, miss-managed, cliche-ridden final third of a movie. Ever. Well maybe. There's some on this list that struggled gasping and panting over the finish line but seriously, Click's finale is abysmal. From the 'tears in the rain' redemption scene to the predictable and tired explanation about how Adam Sandler's workaholic was able to accomplish everything, Click manages to pull in every ridiculous and over-used plot device going and then flog them until they almost literally suck out any life left in the scene. Like a starving vampire, Click's finale is desperate, tired and a sickly, nauseating, shade of greeny white.

More so than any other component of a film, an awful ending can speak volumes for your entire film-watching experience but, luckily for some films, it doesn't the whole bag of garbage make. As a wise man probably once said. So it's not to Click's strength that it is so smugly proud of its awful story that it can't help but wave it in your face throughout its entire run time. Searching for a way to make his life easier Michael (Sandler) buys a universal remote, only to discover that it can effect every facet of his life, not just his electrical appliances. Soon he is skipping 'chapters' of arguments with his wife (Kate Beckinsale) and fast-forwarding to when his boss (David Hasselhoff) promotes him, pressing pause only to get his own back and whack him the face/fart in his face (can you see what level the joke quality is pitched at?). Because director Frank Coraci knows he is on to a one-trick pony here he squeezes every last cheap gag he can get out of using the pause button, or making people talk really quickly in fast forward. It plays on the daydreams of every youngster who's ever wished he could fast forward through school but annoyingly transplants that dream to Sandler's middle-aged, work-addicted, bad-Dad of two.

And that is annoying not only because Sandler uses his powers to accomplish generally mundane dalliances and material posturing but because watching Sandler for the entire two hours of Click borders on attricionally painful. I've never found Sandler inherently funny; for me he is an actor who has to work to generate laughs (not necessarily a criticism), a feat which he accomplishes to a great degree of success in Happy Gilmore and You Don't Mess With The Zohan. But when he's in lazy mode (here completely unconvincing as a workaholic and more akin to a slovenly stay-at-home slob), when he doesn't really have the material to perform mad-cap antics, when he basically doesn't get gifted half of his act he is as stale and wooden as the tallest redwood.

The only thing that raised a laugh during Click for me was the James Earl Jones voice over gag which still managed to get ruined by over-flogging its ridiculousness. Like so many noughties comedies, Coraci's lame attempt shows nothing new and shows it with pride. Extremely disappointing, now pass me the remote.

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'Click ultimately came through for me, but on the dramatic side more than the comedic, as the film turns into an emotional piece during its final half-hour' - JoBlo.com (Berge Garabedian), 7/10