by Rebecca Mikulin

Created on: April 02, 2009

Ever feel like your whole life is passing you by? Spend too much time at work and your family is growing up without you? Here's a guy that knows how you feel.

Michael Newman (Adam Sandler) is an up-and-coming architect with a "smoking hot" wife (Kate Beckinsale) and two beautiful children, Ben and Samantha, who adore him (as kids, played by Joseph Castanon and Tatum McCann respectively). He works hard...way too hard, some might say, but his boss (David Hasselhoff) keeps hinting at all that work paying off if he'll do "just one more thing" to become partner. That one more thing just happens to force a cancellation of the 4th of July camping trip Michael had been planning with his family, leading to a huge fight with his wife, ending in Michael roaring off in the family van in search of a universal remote so he can at least turn on the TV and the ceiling fan and open the garage without a zillion remotes hanging around just like his snobbish neighbors have.

He ends up in the only store open in the middle of the night...Bed, Bath, and Beyond. There Michael becomes acquainted with a very kooky and obviously lonely sales person, lays down on a display bed, then walks through a doorway in the back of the store, past all the bed and bath items sections, labeled "and Beyond".

Through a dark, cavernous room Michael finds a cluttered workshop inhabited by a mad-scientist looking character named Morty (Christopher Walken). Morty offers Michael a special universal remote that's not on the market yet, and says he can have it for free.

Michael takes the thing home, and continues on with his life. The next day strange things start happening, and he quickly realizes that this universal remote is just that...a remote to control the universe. He can pause, access special features, mute, and fast-forward...but while he's fast-forwarding his body is on "auto pilot", keeping him functioning like a very dazed and distant version of himself.

But then it starts doing things it's not supposed to do. Michael takes it back to Morty, who explains that the remote has a memory function that stores the user's preferences and works automatically to fulfill his wishes. As Michael literally fast-forwards through his life he starts to realize where his priorities should have been all along.

This movie starts out as a straight comedy. With a star like Adam Sandler, it has to have funny in it or it's just not an Adam Sandler movie. Watching the previews it looked like a very funny movie and my husband

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>