I am an unabashed Adam Sandler fan. When I was in high school, I bought a DVD of Billy Madison and watched it more times than I can remember. When Funny People came out in 2009, I saw it in theaters. Twice. The combination of Sander’s boyish comedy and Judd Apatow’s slightly higherbrow humor blew my mind. Last month, I happily spent a Saturday afternoon watching That’s My Boy on Netflix. But there’s one Sandler movie that even I have to admit is pure trash — even though I still love watching it.
Click arrived at an interesting moment in Adam Sandler’s career. The early 2000s saw a mix of his usual goofball movies, like Mr. Deeds and Anger Management, along with attempts to flex his skills as a more serious actor in Punch-Drunk Love and Spanglish. Click falls somewhere in the middle. Sandler reaches for something more substantive at times, but can’t resist debasing himself at every turn.
Image: Sony Pictures/Everett Collection
Click’s premise is relatively complex compared to your typical movie from Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions, but it’s still simple enough to explain in a single sentence: Michael Newman (Sandler) is an overworked architect and family man who finds a TV remote that lets him control time. At first, Michael uses the remote to skip annoyances like traffic and a fight with his wife (Kate Beckinsale), or rewinds time back to their first date after he forgets the song that played on their first date (“Linger” by The Cranberries).
Frequent Sandler director Frank Coraci (The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy) presents all this in a flat, simple way, just pointing the camera at Adam and letting him be funny. (It worked, Click made $268.7 million on a budget of $85 million.) But there are some moments of creativity in the way the remote’s powers are conveyed onscreen, and later in the movie, some visions of the future. Then again, no one’s watching Click for the cinematography. If you’re watching, it’s because you love Sandler’s immature sense of humor, and that’s why Click’s second act feels like such a surprise.
The story takes a dark turn (spoilers ahead!) when Michael’s boss dangles a promotion in front of him, only to pull it away. Michael grabs the remote and tries to skip ahead in his life until he actually gets the raise he was promised. He wakes up a year later to learn his marriage is falling apart and his dog is dead. But hey, at least he got that promotion! Unfortunately, the remote has also become sentient. Yes, seriously. This is explained in one of several scenes featuring Christopher Walken as the mysterious Bed Bath & Beyond employee who pawns the device off on Michael, and is later revealed to be (further spoiler alert!) the Angel of Death. As the remote takes control, it opts to skip through even the slightest inconvenience, hurtling Michael further and further into the future.
As Click races into the far-off year of 2029, Coraci imagines a high-tech dystopia with screens plastered everywhere. Also, in the future, Michael is fat, which was hilarious comedy in 2006. (Click was actually nominated for an Oscar for Best Makeup, a testament to the effort that went into Sandler’s aging effects. The film ultimately lost to Pan’s Labyrinth.)
Image: Sony Pictures/Everett Collection
For Sandler, Click was a highly personal project. His first child was born in 2006, and his father died a few years earlier — an experience he recreates on-screen here. The movie mixes the comedian’s typical childish nonsense with a genuine attempt to grapple with his own transition from young adulthood into middle age. And while its final act takes a turn for the absurd, watching Michael’s life unravel as he fast-forwards through it is surprisingly effective.
There are moments of genuine drama and pathos in Click, which caught me off guard in 2006, but make sense in hindsight. Sandler has always had genuine talent as an actor, as he finally proved more than a decade later in Uncut Gems. It’s just that he’s equally good at making fart noises and funny faces. Click was perhaps his best attempt to combine the two.
Click is streaming on Hulu and Disney Plus.
