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Friday, May 24
The Indiana Daily Student

Enter sandman

Sandler and his magical remote

Much time has passed since the days of old Adam Sandler movies, dominated by slapstick comedy and inventive plots. After a pseudo-sabbatical in which Sandler appeared in more serious mainstream movies like "Punch-Drunk Love," "Anger Management" and "Spanglish," Sandler finally returns to a movie where he is the star -- "Click."\nWhile the slapstick may be gone, the inventive plot still remains. Sandler, who usually seems to play roles that more or less reflect the stage of life he is in, plays a married man with two kids. His life is good, yet redundant. His boss (David Hasselhoff -- great casting) is a jerk who overworks him and underpays him, and things are pretty routine at home with his wife (Kate Beckinsale). \nThen, upon another boring trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy a universal remote, Sandler wanders into an area of the store he's never been, "Way Beyond." Here he encounters Christopher Walken (of course), where he is given the remote he is seeking, except with the added power to control the world around him.\nWith new remote in hand, Sandler's life takes off. Much of the laughs in the movie occur during his experimental stage with it, where he encounters audio commentary (James Earl Jones), the 'making of' (his parents having sex), color hue (doing Incredible Hulk and Barney impressions), pause (to hit his boss in the face) and his button of choice -- fast forward (major foreshadowing).\nToo often using the fast forward, the remote breaks and starts fast forwarding when Sandler doesn't want to. This leads to the inevitable lesson about relishing every moment of your life blah blah.\nNow for those of you reading this who think I just ruined the movie for you, think again. I haven't seen the movie yet. That entire plot summary was written solely on what I've seen from commercials.\nAnyone living outside of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country has encountered an absurd amount of commercials, trailers and advertisements for "Click." Once you and I see the movie, we'll see how accurate I was. Any Adam Sandler movie is going to make big money at the box office, so why they dished out what I would assume to be a ridiculous amount of money on this advertising campaign baffles me. They pretty much gave away 60% of the movie.\n(The rest of this review was written after seeing "Click").\nIn fear of being a spoiler, I won't tell you how accurate my plot summary was, but obviously all those scenes were in the movie since I'd seen them in previews. While they all got the inevitable laughs, it was the few moments that were new that I found most amusing.\n"Click" is a solid movie. It harkens back to comedy of "Happy Gilmore" and "Billy Madison," but with a matured spin. Walken and Hasselhoff were expectedly the standout characters, and Sandler does a good job of letting people act around him, while putting in the extra effort when needed. As Sandler gets older and wiser, his movies seem to follow suit -- and it's a good thing.\nIf only I didn't get the feeling like I'd seen it already, it would have been even better.

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