Video reviews: 'Click' worth hitting 'play' button

Friday, October 13, 2006

Click

Sony. DVD-Blu-ray. 107 min. Rated PG-13. $28.95/$38.95. Grade: B

Give the makers of Click credit for an idea as existentialist as it is entertaining.

Michael Newman (Adam Sandler) is an architect on the fast track, a workaholic faced with a perpetual shortage of time. As a result, his wife and children suffer.

What if he could manipulate time in his life? What if he had a remote control that allowed him to fast forward through arguments, eavesdrop on clients, or go back in time and retrieve information (the song playing the first time he kissed his future wife)? Would being able to do these things make him happy?

No, and that's the point of this engaging, if at times manipulative, comedy, which posits the fact that we're so intent on speeding through the low points of life that we miss the high points as well.

Michael gets his remote control from a strange man (Christopher Walken, looking like Doc Brown from Back to the Future) at Bed, Bath & Beyond, with the admonition that it can't be returned. Not that he wants to return it - at first. Tired of hearing the dog bark? Mute him with a button. Mad at your jerk of a boss? Hit "pause" and pass gas in his face.

That latter scene speaks to the frat boy humor present in all of Sandler's films, but this one (like Big Daddy) has a reservoir of melancholy. About halfway through it segues from comedy to dramedy, as Michael realizes that his remote is out of control.

If you're expecting Happy Gilmore this isn't it. Click can be formulaic as Michael moves from self-absorbed to generous, and supporting characters (i.e. Kate Beckinsale as his wife, Henry Winkler as his father) sometimes seem like afterthoughts.

Still, as movies about living life to the fullest go, Click clicks.

A Prairie Home Companion

New Line. DVD. 106 min. Rated PG-13. $27.95. Grade: B-

Fans of public radio should find something to like in the big-screen version of A Prairie Home Companion. More occasional visitors to Lake Woebegone, Minn., will wonder if there's something toxic in the water.

If you're a fan of Garrison Keillor's radio show, in which an eclectic gathering of singers interact with Keillor's sonorous storytelling, you know it's an homage to old-time radio. The family gathered around the box and tuned in a different world.

The movie exploits that world, but now we can visualize what we only heard before. The fictitious plot is set during the very last radio show. A Texan has bought the station and plans to shut the operation down.

Director Robert Altman's restless camera is largely concerned with what is going on backstage. There are the singing Johnson Sisters (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), with their penchant for nostalgia; goofy cowpokes Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly), who barely seem to like each other; and, of course, Garrison himself, who has cast himself (he co-wrote the script) as a sort of half-dazed troubadour.

There's also a fickle company manager (Kevin Kline) and an angel - yes an angel (Virginia Madsen) - who has come to escort one of the aging performers to heaven.

If it all seems a bit surreal, well, so is the show itself. Altman tries to capture that offbeat radio show flavor, and he succeeds more often than not thanks to a stellar cast. There is some good work here, most notably by Streep and Kline. The latter proves as endearing as he does annoying.

The problem is one of context. If you're not familiar with Keillor on the radio, it's hard to imagine you'll be crazy about this film. It's homespun humor that preaches to the choir, but may have trouble finding new converts.

Behind Enemy Lines 2: Axis of Evil

Fox. DVD. 96 min. Rated R. $26.98. In stores Oct. 17. Grade: C

Sometimes the luck of timing favors a DVD. Such is the case with Axis of Evil, the sequel to 2001's Behind Enemy Lines, in which an American soldier is stranded in hostile territory and must make his way home.

The difference? That earlier film starred Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson. The sequel stars . . . well, mostly people you've never heard of.

It's the subject matter that benefits from fortuitous timing: When word comes that North Korea is about to launch a nuclear missile, the U.S. government sends a covert team into the country to blow up the launch site.

And what's in the news these days? North Korea claims to have tested a nuclear device, getting the West up in arms.

Reality notwithstanding, is Axis of Evil any good? Not really. It has the saber rattling routine down pat, and there's much angst as the action pivots between a nervous White House and the bleak North Korean landscape. The covert team loses half its men early on and is then captured. Fortunately there are South Korean spies to free them. Will the Navy SEALs get to the target before the U.S. puts warplanes in the air and starts World War III?

There are a lot of fallow spots in a movie that must pride itself on its expenditure for bullets. Every firefight is shot like a U.S. Army commercial, with fast edits and blurry slow motion imagery, backed by triumphant music. It might be more rousing if we knew what was going on. Half the time you can't tell the good guys from the bad thanks to seizure camera work.

Axis of Evil has its heart in the right place, but there's nothing compelling about its execution.

Mike Pearson is features editor. pearsonm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2592.