Click

Frank Coraci

BY Travis Mackenzie HooverPublished Jul 1, 2006

Words fail to describe the sheer awfulness of the thing called Click, a film which manages to be monstrously hateful above and beyond its technical ineptitude.

Adam Sandler stars as a harried architect who works too hard and can’t seem to find time for his family. Looking for a way out, he stumbles upon inventor Morty (Christopher Walken) and a universal remote that controls how much of the outside distractions he has to endure. But though he has great fun fast-forwarding through arguments and family dinners, the remote starts to remember his settings — meaning he starts missing the important parts of his life.

Barely 15 minutes elapse before women, Arabs and Southeast Asians are defamed, and that sets the tone. Most of the film is spent trying to redeem the detestable lout who perpetrates such hate, but by the climax we’re ready to throw him back into the pit. Those women, by the way, are either simple sex objects (good if it’s your wife; bad if it’s your daughter) or hysterical flibbertigibbets to be dealt manly insults. God help you if you’re in Kate Beckinsale’s shoes, as she’s asked to wear nothing but tiny short-short pyjamas through most of her role as Sandler’s wife.

The film isn’t even creative in its dealing of cruelty. It’s just a bunch of thugs with baseball bats beating up whatever easy target wanders into their gaze; not even the obligatory cheesy turn by David Hasselhoff can save what is an exercise in point and shoot in both senses of the term. Ugly, graceless, and without mercy, it’s is a front-runner for the worst movie of the year. (Sony)

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