"Click" shoots for "Wonderful," ends up with less

Adam Sandler first showed his appreciation for director Frank Capra in 2002’s “Mr. Deeds,” a rough remake of Capra’s 1936 film “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.” In “Click,” Sandler aims higher, turning Capra’s classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” into an uncomfortable combination of lowbrow humor and heavy-handed moralizing.

Sandler plays Michael Newman, a promising young architect torn between - yawn - work and his beautiful wife (Kate Beckinsale). He finds a way out of his dilemma when a strange Bed, Bath & Beyond salesman named Morty (Christopher Walken) gives him a universal remote control that literally controls the universe. Before long Michael is using the remote to silence his dog, beat up his boss (David Hasselhoff) and fast-forward through anything he doesn’t want to deal with.

The first half of the movie is clearly designed with Sandler’s fans in mind. It has jokes about flatulence and bodily fluids. It has Michael slowing down time to stare at a female jogger’s breasts. It has “Saturday Night Live” star Rachel Dratch getting a sex change. And so on. Fans will be entertained, but despite a few laughs, I was bored to tears. I just wanted Sandler to do something new for once.

And then he does, sort of. The second half of the movie is where Sandler pays homage to “It’s a Wonderful Life,” as Michael recognizes his mistakes and attempts desperately to make amends. I give Sandler credit for trying, but the results are largely tortuous, maudlin to the extent that even the notoriously sentimental Capra would be embarrassed. What’s worse, it goes against everything that preceded it.

“Click” takes place in a world populated by idiots, with Michael chief among them. Even accepting the fact that no red-blooded American male would choose work over sleeping in the same bed as Kate Beckinsale, he behaves in ways that defy all logic and common sense. He travels ten years into the future, sees a stranger in his home and demands identification. When he finds out the stranger is of course his son, he reacts with shock and anger. This would be one thing if the length of each fast-forward were unclear, but it is not; Michael knows exactly how long he has traveled and still acts as if everything should have stayed the same.

For over an hour, this idiocy is played strictly for laughs, and the movie’s sudden shift in tone is jarring. It’s manipulative and sloppy, and it feels as though two different movies have been gracelessly cut together.

The only constant is Walken, who plays Morty as someone on a totally different plane of existence than the rest of mankind, prone to bizarre vocal tics and inexplicable bursts of singing and dancing. It’s an exciting performance, funny and enigmatic, and the movie could have used more of him.

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