The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order, by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 309 Days to go: 298
Movie #64: Click
You have to forgive my husband. His job is such that he spends a lot of time completely isolated from normal civilization and when he has down time (which there is a lot of) there’s not much else to do but sleep or read or watch movies. Not all that long ago, before WiFi and streaming Netflix — before smartphones, really — watching movies during his down time at work meant watching DVDs. So he bought a lot of them — most of them blind. He’d hear about a movie but never get a chance to see it, so when it came out on DVD and he saw it in a Wal-Mart discount bin or wherever, he’d buy it unseen. That is how we came to be in possession of Click.
I can kind of understand why my husband would’ve bought it, why he would’ve assumed it would be a safe choice. Adam Sandler used to be funny. I distinctly remember being at least a little bit in love with him on Saturday Night Live, and my best friend and I saw his stand-up live when we were in high school. He killed, and when we met him after the show, he was charming and adorable. Not long after that, he started making movies — and they were funny movies. He became one of the biggest comedy movie stars around, and even when his humor was stupid or sexist or immature, you could still kind of see the fun in it. Click, however, is not a good movie. Click is not a funny movie. Click is a terrible movie.
Click is a jumble of lame, clichéd tropes that are neither funny nor inventive, and everything else is either horribly sexist or incredibly gross or just plain mean-spirited. Ha ha ha, the dog humps a stuffed animal! Michael (Sandler) lets his kids believe it’s wrestling for now, allowing his son to find out the truth in 10 years (at 17) and his daughter in 30 (at 35). Ha ha ha! Girls should be sheltered and never allowed to know or learn anything about sex! While we’re at it, let’s make sure his daughter wears a sweater for the rest of her natural life because God forbid anyone notice she grows up and develops breasts. Let’s shame her instead! Yeah!
Also, wives are terrible nagging creatures, so why don’t we just fast-forward through all her whiny bullshit, because she couldn’t possibly have anything worthwhile to say, and we might as well fast-forward through sex with her too because she likes all kinds of boring sensual physical contact. It’d be much better just to get right to it. Ha ha ha!
Fart in your boss’s face, hit a little boy in the head with a baseball, and kick a rival in the nuts all because you’re an infantile little jerk. Isn’t that hilarious? People might argue that I’m being too hard on a movie that is intentionally painting its lead as a misguided fool with rotten priorities so he can eventually see the error of his ways and redeem himself, but I disagree. This is not A Christmas Carol. It isn’t showing him the way things were, they way they are, and the way they might be. According to the film, all of these things are actually happening. There’s no way to go back or to change things. It’s only at the end that — ta-da! — he “wakes up” (another entirely predictable development) and is given a second chance by his “angel” Morty (Christopher Walken). Up until that point, by all accounts, what was done was done and he had to accept it. The end. Not only that, but Click is supposed to be a comedy. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to laugh at a movie when its main character is completely and utterly unlikable, its plot was laid out by a chimp with a typewriter, and its jokes suck. It’s like one day Adam Sandler woke up as a miserable schlub who didn’t know how to be funny anymore — and that’s a pretty sad day for high school me. (I would add that Kate Beckinsale is better than this, but looking at her IMDb page, I’m not sure that’s true.)
Seriously, this movie is awful. Don’t watch it.
Viable Option 