At the Movies: Corporate climbing dissed in dark, sometimes silly, 'Click'

One gets the feeling that the writers of Click made doubly sure they dished up plenty of slapstick, vulgarities and plain silliness to satisfy Adam Sandler die-hards.

To be honest, the movie — which although not new in concept or delivery — would have been better with most of these scenes trampled underfoot on the cutting-room floor.

As it stands, Click is a scathing satire of the typical American work-aholics who climb up the corporate ladders, but leave in their wakes the detritus of broken marriages, resentful kids and work-induced ill-health.

Sandler's character is just such a person, sucked into the corporate climb ... uber alles.

He neglects his family, misses school sports events, works into the wee hours and eventually is named a partner in an architectural business.

As is clear from the movie's extensive pre-publicity, he's exposed to a handy cop-out when he acquires a truly universal remote control that enables him to fast-forward through chapters of his life that he deems tedious.

The result, of course, is once they're gone, they're gone, except that he's able to flip back to the chapters to view where he went wrong, was insensitive or just plain nasty.

He's accompanied in these fantasy scenes by the provider of the remote, a one-bit-short-of-a-byte scientist played by Christopher Walken. This leads to the meatier part of the movie — a dark journey of remorse, regret and penitence that in some ways captures the surreal mood and off-beat flavor of Sandler's triumph of a couple years ago, Punch Drunk Love.

The point is that Sandler need no longer be stereotyped as the (intentional) doofus of old. Like Jim Carrey, he's beginning to become perfectly aligned with these types of left-of-center roles and the viewers are the richer for it.

Walken, incidentally, is in top form in his rather dubious role in the movie. He even sashays once or twice, as if to imitate his extraordinary music video gyrations on Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice.

David Hasselhoff has a cameo role as the slick head honcho of the architectural firm where Sandler works. But it's unclear whether the underlying smirk of Hasselhoff's character is born of amusement or embarrassment, given the character's blatantly chauvinist outlook.

The flick in a nutshell: Strip away the comic section and it'll be a lesson to many not to squander moments, good, bad or ugly. And, if it wakes up any amount of amorphous corporate suits to smell the roses in real life now and again, so much the better.