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Click

4/10

Stars: Adam Sandler, Kate Beckinsale, Christopher Walken, David Hasselhoff, Henry Winkler, Sean Astin, Julie Kavner

Director: Frank Coraci

This is Adam Sandler's take on It's a Wonderful Life and by golly it's bad.

Distressingly reliant on toilet humour and with few opportunities for the star to be funny in himself, it posits Sandler as a workaholic architect with a gorgeous wife (Beckinsale) and cute kids. Tiring of the various TV controls in his home, he resolves to find a remote that will cover everything.

For some reason, he ends up at a store called Bed, Bath and Beyond, can't find a remote (understandably) and wanders into a department called Beyond - and a door marked Way Beyond. Inside he meets Morty (Walken), a frizzy-haired inventor who hands him the latest remote.

Sandler soon finds that, as well as electrical items, it controls life. He has fun muting the dog, fast-forwarding rows with his wife and interpreting Japanese businessmen - which gets him brownie points with his boss (a game Hasselhoff).

Then, however, the gadget takes over his life, fast-forwarding through all the consequences of his addiction to work, obesity, losing his wife, and more.

Full of low-grade humour, however, this is all stunningly unfunny, and perversely only reasonably successful when it gets serious at the end and turns into quite a tear-jerker. Alas, it all proves, in the finest Hollywood traditions, to have been a dream.

Sandler's worst film to date, Click goes Clunk.

David Quinlan

USA 2006. UK Distributor: Sony (Columbia). Colour by De Luxe.
107 minutes. Not widescreen. UK certificate: 12A.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 0, Swearing 1.

Review date: 24 Sep 2006