A Good Sandler Movie

Click is to Adam Sandler what Liar, Liar was to Jim Carrey. It's that comic's desire to want to branch out into other roles beforehand. For Carrey, we got a little taste of that in an otherwise black comedy known as The Cable Guy. He being the sinister cable technician who made a man's life hell. That brought Carrey onto Liar, Liar which became a hugely successful comedy that gave Carrey the chance to show a little range as an actor. In between the inspired bits of physical comedy, came some tender moments. Click provides that platform and does it surprisingly well because of the lesson learned.

The Adam Sandler audiences have come to known is the guy who would beat the bejesus out of any sucker in movies like Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison. Goofy comedies that really go from point A to point B. You know ultimately, things will work out for the Sandman. But if you were to notice his career, things began to change very slightly. In a subtle manner, the movies got a little more serious than what we were used to. It worked to good effect in Sandler's vehicles before he moved onto The Wedding Singer. There's a sweet, sentimental side to it and skipping The Waterboy, came Big Daddy which tugged a little at the heartstrings in a Kramer vs. Kramer fashion. Then moving over Little Nicky were movies like Mr. Deeds where Sandler got a little more serious, despite the slapstick humor. He completely eschewed that with Punch Drunk Love, as if to dramatize his often violent characters as a bottled up business owner incapable of emotion. Sandler became a little more serious over his next few movies and this has brought us to Click, Sandler's latest blockbuster.

There's a chain of evolution in Sandler's movies where not so famous actors were appearing in his movies before he hit paydirt. Now you've got the likes of hot actresses with household names and Oscar winners as your co-stars. He did this with Anger Management and continues to do it with Click. Much like Liar, Liar, the central character is essentially a decent man who works out of necessity. That necessity is the promise of an already lucrative job, promoting him to an even more lucrative position. His name is Michael Newman (Sandler), a junk food munching architect with a gorgeous wife (Kate Beckinsale) and two cute kids to tend to. His boss (a well-cast David Hasselhoff, avoiding any self-deprecating cameo) is a shallow schmuck who dangles the promise of promotion over Michael, who unknowingly goes after it every time and making his family pay for the consequences with his late night work assignments and frequent neglect. But enough, to kick start the plot: Michael makes a late night jaunt to a store and runs into an oddball inventor (Christopher Walken) who gives him a remote control. This device in turn as Michael learns, actually allows him to fast forward and rewind parts of his life. At first it seems easy since he can get his way out of anything, but he learns it has consequences when the remote memorizes what he does.

Click is fairly enjoyable and it harkens back to Sandler's The Wedding Singer, itself a foreshadowing of what were to come in Sandler's career when his next movie with the same team, would hit really big with The Waterboy. Wedding Singer was a hit but it was good for more than just chuckles or 80's nostalgia, there was a sweet story underneath about boy meets girl. In Click, it's about a man learning a valuable life lesson with family and career. In almost ten years, Sandler's become a much more skilled actor and seems more comfortable in parts he would usually squirm in, and fall back on his old gimmick of slapstick comedy. Sandler's more confident in this part and allows the humor to really take place in the situation than anything he causes. As the star, he seems to have fallen into either two kinds of characters: neurotic men of low confidence like Anger Management or ones who just don't care like Fifty First Dates. Sandler almost straddles the two into one personality. He channels the faults as well as the upside of these characters that does have you rooting for him.
He's also surprisingly dramatic in the part, which many critics overlook as just a dumb Sandler vehicle that shouldn't make money. Click is made for the masses though so any idea of it being a wonderfully intense movie can be dismissed.

Maybe it will work, maybe not but Click put a lump in my throat. At first the movie's humorous but when you begin to experience what the lead character experiences, you learn just how much he needs to control his life. Working with director Frank Coraci (an old Sandler pal), they manage to extract the drama from the comedy and illustrate the lesson that is learned, well. It also helps with such a solid cast besides Walken, who can only add to his gallery of eccentrics but with more humanity than before; but Beckinsale as Michael's wife (and personally, he should've gotten his butt kicked for neglecting a woman as gorgeous as she) and Hasselhoff as Michael's boss. It's strange to see the Baywatch star not make fun of himself but manage to play such a loathsome character that you can't help but despise his phony personality. For the rest of the cast, it's hard for them to remain in the film but they try, and make their impression as well like Henry Winkler and Julia Kavner (as Michael's parents) and Sean Astin (as a swimming coach). I felt that while I like Astin the actor, his part was really a cardboard role that could've been played by anybody. He felt a little too late to be put in the film except to establish the drama in the film.

This is also quite a special effects beast for all things considered in a Sandler film. Click is indeed a satire of well, DVDs as they make fun of the format here, complete with commentary and special features. But going to the special effects, they're top notch and watching how the simple use of editing tricks work to their advantage. Special mention really belongs to the makeup, which is done by Rick Baker, the same guy who did The Grinch and the Planet of the Apes redo. Watching how the characters age is fantastic since it almost looks seamless. To reveal a minor spoiler, there's a surprising scene with a character as a fat person which is pulled off quite well.

A takeoff both on It's a Wonderful Life and Liar, Liar (the dad is also a career-minded workaholic), Click is a great comedy but with drama to it. In the context of the story though, it works well and the direction of the story is pretty inspiring. They could've made it a series of gimmicks but chose not to, instead putting in a change for the character that needed to be addressed rapidly. All in all, a recommended movie for someone looking for a good time at the movies.