Stop this thing

Recently you may have heard about the sad debacle involving Kaavya Viswanathan, a promising young high school grad entering Harvard whose manuscript caught the attention of New York publishing house Little, Brown and Co. A major-figure book deal followed with DreamWorks expressing interest in the soon-to-be-published novel as a fast-track feature film project. But Viswanathan got busted for plagiarism, got her book deal revoked, and got on the fast track to obscurity as her Cinderella Story road trip to fame turned into a pumpkin of the 15-minute variety.

She should have tried Hollywood first, where plagiarism is not only the norm, but apparently rewarded.

Case in point: Click, a tarted-up retooling of It’s a Wonderful Life, with elements of Back to the Future, Scrooged (referencing the Bill Murray version of “A Christmas Carol” because the Hollywood creative pool is so diluted at this point that I doubt a working writer there under 40 has even heard of the source material), and The Wizard of Oz thrown in for good measure. Click opened last weekend with a $40 million box office.

Plagiarism pays in the right market.

Here we have Adam Sandler as Michael Newman, a workaholic architect busting his assets to climb the corporate ladder—his assets being his lovely wife and two treacly cute children. Since Sandler is also the producer, he gets to have Kate Beckinsale as his on-screen wife. Overwhelmed with frustration and taking it out on the confounding array of remotes lying about his house, Michael makes a late-night journey to Bed, Bath & Beyond (the first of a vast array of gratuitous stealth advertising) to score a universal remote, where he encounters Dr. Emmett Brown’s presumed cousin Morty (Christopher Walken) in the back, back room. Hip to his plight, Morty lays a universal remote on Michael that, well, controls Michael’s universe.

Unfortunately, as Michael is played by Sandler, that means the remote is mostly used to pause people, pull their pants down, fart in their faces, or kick them repeatedly in the ‘nads. Hit “play” as comedic possibilities are fulfilled.

Granted, the first half of the film is sporadically amusing, as a few solid laughs are milked from the scenario, although the majority of the set pieces are ill-delivered or just really not all that funny, such as an interminable recurring gag involving the family dog using a large stuffed duck as a sex doll. Most of the set pieces really have no connection to each other, other than Michael’s tenuous attendance to them as his remote control goes on the fritz, spiraling through “fast forward,” “delete” and “skip” the high points of the life he’s missing.

Too bad there wasn’t an eject button on that remote. Toward the last quarter of the movie even the occasional laughs dry up as the script shifts gears and tries to become a message movie. What the hell is up with multimillionaire film stars making feel-good fluff for their target demographic that condescendingly advises folks who are probably one missed payment away from losing their house to stop and smell the roses, that life’s too short to sweat being homeless as long as you’ve got family?

But saddled with Sandler, the pathos the filmmaker tries to evoke in the final stretch comes across as embarrassing, not heartbreaking. The rest of the cast stands about watching as he flails about in old-age makeup, that presumed lima bean still up one nostril as he squawks Hallmark-card aphorisms.

Sandler is no Jimmy Stewart, and he doesn’t have the chops to be an actor. Leave the acting up to Keanu, Adam. Of course, it doesn’t help things any that the director is no Frank Capra, either. Perhaps if there were a different writer, a different director and a different lead actor involved in this project, it might have been a better picture. But then it would have been a different picture altogether, perhaps one with Sandra Bullock as a clumsy FBI agent busted down by the bureau (after she inadvertently exposes the president’s involvement in a male prostitution ring to the public) and is assigned to the Los Angeles Rampart division to go deep under cover in a seedy strip joint. Call it Miss Congeniality 3: L.A.P.Dancer.

Even that would be infinitely preferable to this.