Dir. Frank Coraci, US, 2006, 107 mins
Cast: Adam Sandler, Kate Beckinsale, Christopher Walken
Review by Carol Allen
The premise of this story is a brilliantly imaginative one. Michael (Sandler) is a workaholic architect, neglecting his family for his career. He does, however, find time for a brief shopping trip to look for a universal remote control to simplify his chaotic life. In the course of this he meets a definitely weird shop assistant (Walken), who has mad inventor written all over him, and who sets him up a with very special gadget - a remote control, which allows him to move through time to different bits of his own life like playing a DVD, with menus, chapters, fast forward, replay, pause etc. Initially this seems like a good wheeze - putting the barking dog on pause is amusing, although I question the wisdom of doing it to one's wife. The gadget also enables Michael to fast forward through the boring bits of life, hoping to get sooner to his longed for promotion. But then, like so many of today's smart ass gadgets, the thing starts to dictate which bits of his life to fast forward through, based on his previous choices, and, before he knows it, he's missing out on the good bits and is a long way down his life line with no idea how he got there.
There are a few good gags in this movie and it also makes a valid point about the way we spend so much time fretting about the past and worrying and planning for the future, that we forget to appreciate what we have in the present moment, although toward the end it rams this one home in a tear jerking climax that is maudlin rather than moving. It also has some good digs at the destructive American “success” ethic. I do though have a problem with Sandler in the lead. He is playing a man, who is basically selfish and unpleasant, yet imposing his goofy, man-child, "like me, like me" personality on it and the two don't really gel. And a lot of the jokes fall flat, including an inevitable silly fart gag, plus a couple about Arabs and the Japanese, which are positively dodgy. With this story idea there is scope for a much wittier and more inventive script.
Interestingly, although the film covers a longish time period and all the other characters age appropriately, Sandler, apart from a bit of becoming grey at the temples, remains unchanged. Star vanity perhaps? The other actors acquit themselves well. There are good cameos from Julie Kavner and Henry Winkler as Michael’s delightfully Jewish parents, Walken is suitably eccentric, Beckinsale does her best with the cliché perfect wife and mother role and newcomer Jake Hoffman makes a good impression as Michael's grown up son in the later scenes. It is, though, an Adam Sandler vehicle and I am not much of an Adam Sandler fan. As an actor, he is a little like Jim Carrey, in that in the hands of a strong director he can do good work, but left to his own devices, as I suspect he was here - I see he has a producer credit on this movie - his humour becomes gross, blunt and distinctly unsubtle.
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