Click (2006)
A good magician never reveals his secrets.
THE SUMMARY: A workaholic dad discovers a ‘universal remote’ that can pause, fast-forward, and rewind time, but he learns skipping through life has its costs, with painfully lame fart, boob, and dog sex jokes to lighten the mood. The ounce of valuable substance in this movie is thoroughly outweighed by a ton of ridiculous premises, and even worse writing. It’s a bargain bin of the dollar store Back to the Future ripoff - if you like Doc and Marty without any of the charm or creativity and just bathroom humor instead, here’s your movie.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER JACOB: A surprisingly funny and wholesome movie that reminds you to appreciate the mundane, or even unpleasant, parts of life.
JAMIE AND JEANNE’S AI FACESWAP ART:
Engineer Blonde considers the physics of the border catapult.
Don’t worry - I don’t tell HR.
If Blonde never quit smoking weed.
Actually, it's the spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy's.
Should have explained the rewind function better.
A schlub with a hot wife is indeed the way to be.
THE BEST:
Yes, focus on family first/the paradox of fatherhood: The nugget of value in this movie is its core message: yes, a man’s job is to support his family. But even that fundamental purpose has an intended effect: to enjoy your family. If you work so hard that you leave them with nothing but nice things when you die, you’ve deprived them of something more important: a father in the human role. The support. The guidance or advice. The discipline. And yes, the fun. The challenge as a husband and father is to fill all of those roles sufficiently, without hyper-focusing on some while totally neglecting others.
Another way of considering that dilemma I’ll call ‘the paradox of fatherhood.’ To love your family is to support them through hard work. But to work hard is to leave them. A good dad isn’t a guy who’s gone all the time but cuts big checks. Likewise, a good dad isn’t a guy who houses his family in a cardboard shanty but has lots of time for tee ball, either.
Like always, the solution is a proper balance, and the challenge is to find it. Personally, like any other dad, my time is often spent away from my family for the sake of providing for them. But if all that work doesn’t ever buy you quality time, you need to reevaluate. As you learn quickly with fatherhood, once those precious moments with your kids are gone, they’re gone forever, like Dragon Tales in this movie.
Yes, there is a balance to things.
THE WORST:
The premise is bunk - why doesn’t he just pause or rewind?: This time travel concept makes no sense, and even within its nonsensical rules, Michael uses it very poorly. If he can just pause time, why doesn’t he pause time to complete his work, and then unpause to spend time with his kids? He could actually buy the 200 years with his daughter this way. If he’s learned his lesson, why doesn’t he just rewind? Oh, right - for some reason when he rewinds, he’s only a spectator and not a participant, because… nonsense. So he can’t actually travel back in time, until he does at the end of the movie, because… again, nonsense.
Even more frustratingly, Michael is supposedly sincere in trying to find his way back to a quality family life, while using the power of the remote for idiotic things like looking at a jogger’s rack, or watching his dad plow his mom, or making the neighbor kid get hit in the face with a baseball. For any serious value the time travel concept has, Click diminishes it with cheap trashy jokes that don’t land because they aren’t clever or creative.
Absolutely awful jokes: Speaking of, let me itemize the garbage can of Click’s humor:
A fart in the face - I get it… it’s smelly.
Several dogs f**k a duck - I guess it’s funny because it rhymes.
What in the hell are all these incest references or jokes? Michael tells his son that nobody touches his sister but him. Michael is amazed at his teen daughter’s rack. Michael says his daughter will be the hottest chick in the world. Most bizarrely, Michael implicitly tells his dad to suck his d**k (his dad says he had a tictac-sized penis as a kid, which is the setup). I genuinely don’t get any of these references or jokes. I’m not even pearl clutching about the topic as off-limits - it’s just… weird. It’s not clever or funny, and makes no sense in the context of what is supposed to be a serious family foundation to the movie.
This close to Back to the Future intellectual property theft: Oh look, he stumbled upon a wacky aging crazy-hair science man with a time machine invention, and through a journey into the future, the protagonist learns lessons that are useful when he goes back. This movie was already made twenty years prior, and it was way better the first time. Although, to be fair, the original also had bizarre incest themes.
It’s kinda wrong about its central message: And finally, to return to the movie’s main point which I praised, focus on family first, I’m not sure this movie is even right about they way it presents that value. Yes, don’t work so hard you neglect your family in every aspect otherwise, but… as a man, if you have to choose between providing for your family, or not… always choose to provide for them. My kids don’t need a couch-surfing friend - they need a secure and stable home, and I’ll be damned if I don’t provide it. I actually think erring on the side of Michael’s original character to start the movie is the proper way to be. It has its flaws and considerations, but it’s better than the alternative.
I get it - fart.
He's not a Doc ripoff - he's an angel, or something.
So you can fast-forward to the future and live it, but rewind only to spectate... because... reasons.
THE RATING: 2/5 Wickies, and in retrospect, that’s probably too generous. Click is a stolen concept, dressed up with with nonsensical premises and even worse humor. It’s a haystack of dogshit with a needle of wisdom at the very bottom.
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NEXT WEEK: Requiem for a Dream (2000)
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