Click (2006 film)

Michael Newman, an architect, is married to Donna and has two children, Ben and Samantha. Michael is bullied by his overbearing boss, John Ammer, and often chooses work over family. Michael visits the retail store Bed Bath & Beyond to buy a universal remote control. He stumbles around the various departments before falling asleep. Upon waking, a man named Morty offers Michael a free remote but warns it can never be returned.

Learning to use the remote, Michael finds that it can control reality much like a television. He uses it to his advantage at work but also uses it to fast-forward past illness or use "picture-in-picture", concentrating on a baseball game while Donna nags him. Morty tells Michael that during these times, his body is on "auto-pilot", going through his motions of everyday life while his mind skips ahead.

Michael is unable to buy bicycles for his children, but knowing that Ammer plans to promote him to a partnership, he uses the remote to skip to the promotion. He is shocked to find that a year has passed. During that time, he and Donna have entered marriage counseling, his children have grown out of their desire for bicycles, and the family dog has died. The remote, having learned his preferences, starts time-skipping in response to casual wishes Michael makes. Michael attempts to discard or destroy the remote, but it reappears in his hands shortly after each attempt, and Morty refuses to take it back.

At work, Ammer tells Michael he plans on retiring, which would make Michael the new head of the International Division. When Michael presses the subject of his promotion, Ammer tells him that, in time, he could be promoted to CEO, which causes the remote to instantly fast-forward ten years into the future. While Michael is wealthy, he has become morbidly obese and Donna has divorced him. He returns home to find Ben and Samantha have both become moody teenagers. He argues with Donna and new husband Bill, which causes their family dog to jump on Michael, knocking him into a coma. The remote time-skips six years to when Michael wakes, no longer obese, having undergone liposuction to save his life as a part of his cancer treatment and subsequent heart attack. A full-grown Ben is now a partner at the firm, however Michael learns his father Ted has died of old age.

While Michael is mourning his father, Morty reappears. Michael uses the remote to go to Ted's deathbed, but it fails. Morty explains the remote only replays events in his life where he was present, and his father's last hour was not one of them. Michael uses the remote to see when he last saw his father, when Michael rebuffed his father's offer to take him and Ben out to dinner. Michael visits his father's grave. Morty appears and reveals to Michael that he is the Angel of Death. Overcome with guilt and shame, Michael asks to go to a "good place", whereupon the remote fast-forwards him several more years in the future to Ben's wedding. Michael has a second heart attack when Samantha calls Bill her dad. When he wakes in the hospital later that night, he finds his family there, including Ben. Ben skipped his honeymoon to help fix issues with the firm. Michael, fearing that his son will make the same mistakes he made, implores him not to ignore his wife, but a nurse makes Ben and Samantha leave. Michael gathers his last bit of strength to follow them out of the hospital. He collapses and his family rushes to his aid. Michael tells Ben to always put family first and assures his family that he still loves them. He dies and Morty arrives to take Michael.

Michael wakes in Bed Bath & Beyond and assumes that he was dreaming. He races to his family to make up for the mistakes he made with the remote and fulfills his promise to spend the 4th of July with them. He finds the remote on the counter with a note from Morty, reading "Good guys need a break". Michael considers what to do for a moment before throwing the remote in the trash, and is overjoyed when it does not reappear in his hand.

On July 23, 2003, Sony purchased Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe's spec script, named Click, for $1.75 million with plans for it to be an Adam Sandler film produced by Revolution Studios, Columbia Studios, and Neal H. Moritz's company Original Film; the purchase occurred as the Koren-and-O'Keefe-penned Bruce Almighty (2003) had grossed $236 million domestically in its two month run.[6] Click was the second comedy Moritz produced for Columbia Pictures, after Not Another Teen Movie (2001).[7] Although Sony planned filming to begin in April 2004 after Sandler finished shooting Spanglish (2004),[7] that was postponed for Karen and O'Keefe to rewrite the script under the supervision of Juan Jose Campanella, who was also planned to direct the film as announced by Variety on May 12, 2004.[8] However, he was replaced by Frank Coraci, who previously directed Sandler vehicles The Wedding Singer (1998) and The Waterboy (1998), in March 2005.[9] Executive producer Tim Herlihy was also enacted several script revisions.[9] Christopher Walken joined the cast on February 23, 2005.[10]

Imageworks began working on the digital effects for Click in January 2006 without any research and development.[11] While most of the effects were shot compositings, three-dimensional graphics were also made for the display on the remote and matte painting a few settings, such as the Bed and Beyond warehouse, a city background at Michael's workplace, and the winter backyard at his home; programs such as Cinema 4D and Autodesk Maya were used to produce the graphics.[11] In order to make the fast-forwarding and rewinding look DVD-like, effects of interlaced video and scan lines "slicing through" were added.[11] Motion control photography and green screen effects were used for scenes where Michael looked back on his life with the remote, meaning that were occasionally two Michaels in the same shot; while rotoscoping was used for the sequence where he changes the color of his face with the remote.[11]

When it came to scenes where Michael pauses his surroundings, the effects crew originally planned for everything to be frozen, including the environment; however, they found out this "bothered" the eye, thus switching the plan to only the characters being frozen while the environment (such as leafs on the trees being blown by wind) keeps in motion.[11] The primary challenge for the freeze shots was sharpening the frozen characters as much as possible; there were some cases where the characters would freeze in a very active moment, causing the effects team to have to work with the motion blur that resulted from it.[11] For instances where characters were frozen in a moment where they were still, they were filmed staying in that position for seconds so that, during post-production, the average of multiple frames would create a result absent of film grain.[11]

Click's official website debuted in late December 2005, consisting only of the film's official trailer; C.S. Strowbridge of The Numbers called the trailer "better than I expected. It seems like Adam Sandler is serious about maturing as an actor."[12] Other interactive features and pages were added later on, such as a plot summary, image gallery, information about the cast and crew, audio and video clips, and a Control Your Universe poster generator.[13][14]

The film screened out of competition at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. The film was released in the United States on June 23, 2006 and made its UK premiere in a London Empire Cinema on September 28, 2006.[15]

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