Click

Work Title: Click
Medium: Film
Episode Title:
Year: 2006
Writer(s): Steve Koren
"Original" Writer: Yes Writer(s): Mark O'Keefe
"Original" Writer: Yes Own work?: No

Summary:

Michael Newman (Sandler) is a hard working family man, who must please his boss (Hasselhoff), in order to get promoted. Problem is he gets less time with his family, and wishes for a remote in which he can control his life. This soon comes true for Newman, when he meets Morty (Walken), a crazy sales clerk, who has the ultimate remote. A remote in which he can do anything, including muting, skipping and dubbing his life. He finds this to be the opportunity in which he can not only skip every argument, but also skip to his promotion. He sees this as a good idea, until the remote goes horribly wrong.


Era/Year of Portrayal: present_day

Distinctive characteristics of the world in portrayal:

Everyone around the main protagonist seems to be living the perfect life. Driving Michael Newman (Sandler) to find a way to make his life as ideal as his neighbors.


Technology

  • Name of portrayed presence-evoking technology: The Remote
  • Description of the technology: Michael finds himself in the possession of a magical 'universal' remote control that he can travel around with. The remote allows him to fast forward, rewind and pause. This allows him to seamlessly control and experience all the events in his life as he see fit.
  • Nature of task or activity: By using the remote, Michael has the ability to muffle the barks of the family dog, zoom himself past an irritating quarrel with his wife, and even allow him to travel back and forth through time to different points in his life.
  • Performance of the Technology: Towards the end of the film, the remote begins to malfunction, causing Michael to deal with consequences that he was previously able to skip over. Michael soon realizes that by skipping through the less desirable parts of everyday life, he is missing out on the total experience.
  • Description of creator(s): The remote is invented by an elderly and possibly psychotic inventor who works at a Bed Bath & Beyond. Later in the movie it is revealed that Morty is the Angel of Death.
  • Major goal(s) of creator(s): Morty's goal is to teach Michael to value his life without having to use technology to escape the less-than desirable parts of life.
  • Description of users of technology: Michael is a middle aged American blue-collar worker. While it may appear that Michael has it all on the outside, he is extremely unhappy. The pressure from his dead-and job are forcing him to spend less and less time with his wife and two kids.
  • Type(s) of presence experience in the portrayal: both
  • Description of presence experience: Among other things, he is able to pause time and mess around with the rest of the world as they are stuck frozen in time. Additionally, he is able to go backwards and forwards in time and relive experiences directly. Overtime the remote gets stuck on Auto-pilot mode. This means that after he fast-forwarded through a situation one, the remote would automatically do that for him the next time he did that activity. For example, on his first day to work with the remote, he fast-forwarded through getting dressed and driving through traffic on the way to work. However, the next time, we went to get ready for work, he uncontrollably fast forwarded through the whole process, until he arrived at work. Michael soon grows tired of this luxary and begins to wake up and bike to his work in slippers and a robe, just so he gets to experience getting to work on his own. At one point, Michael accidentally hits the fast-forward and wakes up 10 years later and extremely obese. This is enough to convince Michael that the powers of the remote are greater than he can handle.
  • User awareness of technology during experience: Other than a few scenes, Michael cognitively decides when to use the remote. Before he realizes the dangers of the remote, he becomes completely accustomed to living life in a technologically augmented reality.
  • Valence of experience: Initially, Michael thinks the remote is the greatest thing to happen in his life because he can filter all of his experiences. One of the main reasons Michael takes the remote from Morty is so that he can spend more time with his family. However over time, Michael realizes the consequnces of skipping through life as you please. However, by this time its too late as the remote has already started to malfunction.
  • Specific responses: Before Michael gets the remote, he appears to be a man who is just slightly out of control of his life. Therefore, the remote seems like the perfect thing for him. On his first opportunity using the remote at work, he gladly takes the opportunity to freeze time and then slap and fart in his bosses face. Along with a few comedic antics, Michael initially uses the remote to improve the quality of his life by doing things more efficiently. However once the device starts to malfunction, he quickly begins to resent the technology. At one point, after prolonged usage of the remote, Michael suffers from a heart-attack. One of the last scenes includes Michael dressed in hospital garments saying "family first."
Long-term consequences:

As Sandler lays motionless on a rainy street, it appears that he has died. However, he is awoken in his hospital bed by Morty, who thought he would give him one more chance of life because he denounced the remote and realized what truly matters in life.

Other:

Coder name: Skyler Radis
Coder email: Tud03100@temple.edu
Coder affiliation: Temple University