Does Sandler 'Click'? Not Remotely.

He laughs, he cries, he cuts rancid cheesy blasters.

That's pretty much it for the new Adam Sandler wallow, "Click," and I'd resign right now if I had an actual life to go back to.

Since I don't, I heroically continue, no applause please -- well, okay, just a little: The movie follows from the premise that by typical fantasy hooey, Sandler, impersonating workaholic architect Michael Newman, acquires the ultimate in universal remotes -- that is, a remote that controls the universe. With the click of a button, he is able to fast-forward through the boring or unpleasant parts of his life, pause to consider snappy comebacks or exact a petty revenge on oppressors, turn down the volume on arguments with his wife (poor, forlorn Kate Beckinsale), pretty much treat his life as a DVD. It even has a commentary section, where some snarky critic offers unpleasant interpretations of his decisions.

The conceit plays adroitly with the American tendency toward remote-normative lifestyles. (I happen to share my bed with one beautiful woman and three remotes and she would probably argue that I am equally married to all four of them.) And it's certainly the movie that the trailers and the mega-million-dollar pub campaign suggested you were going to get for your money, a crass physical comedy of unrelenting irrelevance with a gag or two amid the many examples of bad taste, extrapolating toward infinite on the theme of remote-control reality.

But what's wrong with this movie isn't the movie, it's Sandler himself, his sensibility, his sense of humor, which is aggressively hostile. It's the humor of a bullied boy striking back at his tormentors without fear of retaliation. In fact, the first half of the film, hereinafter known as The Funny Part, watches him enjoy Godlike power in ways no god would ever consider. His boss (good sport David Hasselhoff) cheats him out of a plum promotion he thinks he's earned: He puts the boss on Pause, climbs up on the desk, pivots, and launches a death cloud from the Second Battle of Ypres. Or feeling the onset of a cold, he hits FF and skips over the whole thing, returning to sentience when that itchyscratchyfeverishicky feeling is all gone. He can even call up "chapters" from memory, like the time he first planted a lip lock on his wife, an episode meant to be touching, but somehow Adam Sandler isn't really set up to sell "touching."

I suppose the device by which Michael acquires the gizmo is marginally witty. He goes to the "Beyond" section of the local Bed, Bath & Beyond and there encounters, behind the worst perm this side of Barbra Streisand in "The Way We Were," screwball scientist Morty (Christopher Walken), who takes him to "Way Beyond" and then "Way, Way Beyond," where the thing is stored. (The movie -- minor irritation -- is a frenzy of similarly branded product placements.) And why does Morty give the thing to Michael? Because Michael's a good guy who deserves a break.

Except he's not a good guy who deserves a break. He's a selfish, self-absorbed, smug little weenie, who turns on everybody at the drop of a hat, who cheats to succeed, who brutalizes his children, who screams at his wife, and who looks to be a pretty mediocre architect in the bargain. It's hard to give a feather for Michael Newman.

Now we reach the second half of the movie, which shall forever after be referred to as The Unfunny Part. Clearly inspired by Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" or maybe even Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," the screenplay by Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe uses the fast-forward feature to click to Michael's future, where he doesn't like what he sees: a career-crazed dynamo who's lost all hope of love in his fight to the top, who never has time for kids or family or parents, who lashes out. I smell vanity project all over the place on this one. Turning surprisingly dark and completely humorless, Sandler moralizes pompously while chewing the scenery like a cow with two cuds. He tries to pull off despair, grief, anger, futility, regret, even a heart attack and a fat suit (Note to self: Remember important "Fat Suit in American Cinema" piece for Film Comment), all those big adult emotions that have never before been featured in an Adam Sandler film. Remember Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life," the way he was able to show the ugliness and the fear that ran beneath George Bailey's seemingly placid, decent exterior? Great performance. This one will not remind you of it, not even one little bit. It's just Sandler on an Oscar jag, all revved up under the impression that loud is good.

And I have to say also that this, physically, is one of the worst-designed movies ever made. It's utterly clueless. The "architecture firm" that Michael works for far more resembles a PR outfit; the house he lives in is unbearably cheesy and tacky, unbelievable for anyone pretending to be an architect (it's like the valley tract house where Edward Furlong lived in "Terminator II"). But when the movie unwisely lurches into the future, it becomes absurd, with all kinds of faux-Tomorrowland tropes -- knotless ties and weird knit caps for medical personnel, Segways for personal transport and little minicars that look like roller skates after sex with a DeLorean.

In fact, halfway through the film (which feels like two blinkin' hours!) I was the one wishing for a remote. I'd have hit that Off button so fast it'd make your nose bleed.

Click (98 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for profanity, sexual humor and drug references.