Adam Sandler | Adam Sandler Music

Adam Sandler's Happy Madison will be teaming up with Kevin Misher to produce the comedy, The Day I Turned Uncool: Confessions of a Reluctant Grown-Up for Paramount Pictures.

Sandler may also star in the adaptation of Dan Zevin's comic memoir; Paul Bernbaum will adapt the screenplay about the cataclysmic reality of hitting his 30s and facing up to the commitments that come with graduating into adulthood, notes Variety.

There's no production schedule yet for The Day I Turned Uncool.

I generally enjoy Adam Sandler films. But "Click" delivers more than your average Sandler flick.

The premise of the movie is pretty basic. Sandler's character, Michael Newman, is a middle-class guy trying to get a promotion at work. He wants to give his family a better life than he ever had, and sometimes that forces him to make difficult decisions between family life and work.

His family is his wife, Donna Newman (Kate Beckinsale), his daughter Samantha (Tatum McCann) and son, Ben (Joseph Castanon).

Michael is frustrated with his inability to please everyone.

Late one night, he watches a video as part of a work project he is desperately trying to finish. But he can't figure out how to work the remote and leaves to buy a universal remote control. Michael heads to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, where, after passing the "Bed" and "Bath" sections he stumbles upon the "Beyond" section of the store.

In the mysterious section, he is helped by Morty (Christopher Walken). Morty recognized that Michael is a nice guy who just needs a break and offers him a new remote, which will make his life easier. Michael soon discovers there is more to the remote than meets the eye.

What really makes this movie great is the smaller, supporting parts, such as Michael's boss, played by womanizing David Hasselhoff or Speedo sporting swim coach Sean Astin. Even the dog, Sundance, steals the spotlight in his obsession with a stuffed animal duck.

One of the funniest characters in the movie is the obnoxious boy who lives next door. Sandler shines in the childlike fights he has with the bratty kid.

This movie stands out above other Sandler flicks for one reason: It attempts to have a soul. You may even need a tissue box by the end of the film. For me, "Click" definitely, clicked.

Lynch and Benanti in The Wedding Singer
photo by Joan Marcus

The Wedding Singer, the new musical based on the Adam Sandler film of the same name, will end its Broadway run at the Hirschfeld Theatre Dec. 31. The musical will have played 30 previews and 284 performances.

The Wedding Singer, which played an out-of-town tryout at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre, officially opened on Broadway April 27; previews began March 30.

Producers of the musical are currently in discussion for a national tour that would begin in 2007. Productions in both Japan and Korea are also in the works, and a deal was recently made with Music Theatre International for stock and amateur rights.

Tony Award winner John Rando—of Urinetown fame — directed the musical, which is based on the popular 1998 New Line Cinema film. Composer Matthew Sklar and lyricist Chad Beguelin penned the score; the book was written by Beguelin and Tim Herlihy. Thoroughly Modern Millie Tony winner Rob Ashford choreographed.

Singer and comedian Stephen Lynch heads the cast as Robbie Hart, the role created on screen by film star Sandler. Lynch plays opposite two-time Tony Award nominee Laura Benanti, who co-stars as his love interest Julia. Benanti missed several weeks of the show's run due to a vocal injury.

The cast also features Richard Blake, Kevin Cahoon, Felicia Finley, Rita Gardner, Constantine Maroulis and Amy Spanger.

In The Wedding Singer "it's 1985 and rock-star wannabe Robbie Hart is New Jersey's favorite wedding singer," according to the producers. "He's the life of the party-until his own fiancée leaves him at the altar. Shot through the heart, Robbie makes every wedding he plays as disastrous as his own. Enter Julia, a winsome waitress who wins his affection. Only trouble is Julia is about to be married to a Wall Street shark, and unless Robbie can pull off the performance of the decade, the girl of his dreams will be gone forever. With a brand new score that pays loving homage to the pop songs of the 1980s, The Wedding Singer takes us back to a time when hair was big, greed was good, collars were up, and a wedding singer just might be the coolest guy in the room."

Song titles include "It's Your Wedding Day," "Someday," "A Note From Linda," "Pop," "Somebody Kill Me," "A Note from Grandma," "Casualty of Love," "Come Out of the Dumpster," "Today You Are a Man," "George's Prayer," "Not That Kind of Thing," "Saturday Night in the City," "All About the Green," "Right in Front of Your Eyes," "Single," "If I Told You," "Let Me Come Home," "Move That Thang" and "Grow Old With You."

The set design for The Wedding Singer is by Scott Pask; the costume design is by Gregory Gale; the lighting design is by Brian MacDevitt; the sound design is by Peter Hylenski; the hair design is by David Brian Brown; the make-up design is by Joe Dulude. Orchestrations are by Irwin Fisch; the music director is James Sampliner.

The Wedding Singer is produced by Margo Lion, New Line Productions, Inc., The Araca Group, Roy Furman, Doug Meyer/James D. Stern Productions, Rick Steiner, Steve Traxler/Jam Theatricals, in association with Adam Epstein, Jay Furman, Michael Gill, Allan S. Gordon, Dr. Lawrence Horowitz, Elan V. McAllister, Marisa Sechrest, and Gary Winnick.

Masterworks Broadway, a new label formed by the combination of Sony Classical/Columbia Masterworks and RCA Victor — as part of the Sony BMG merger — released the show's original Broadway cast recording in June.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment have announced the imminent arrival of its first three 50GB Blu-ray Discs in Europe, including the Adam Sandler comedy Click, Ridley Scott’s action-packed drama Black Hawk Down and the hit comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby all set to roll out across Europe during the first quarter 2007.

Bonus content is identical to the discs announced for North America and Canada, which you can find full details on here.

Who doesn’t dream of being in Adam Sandler’s shoes in the movie Click! While his remote control does take a diabolical turn mid-way we assure you that you won’t suffer the same fate with the ultra-sexy Kameleon Generation 3 Universal Remote Control.

The Kameleon Generation 3 Universal Remote Control will take your couch potato dreams further as it can control your TV, DVD, satellite, and amplifier. It can also switch and dim up to 256 lights in your house and thus create the right mood! The KG3 is housed in a slim aluminum casing and the base model is available for £69.99.

Adam Sandler comedy Click, from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, easily topped both the national DVD sales and rental charts for the week ending Oct. 15.

On Nielsen VideoScan's First Alert sales chart, Click debuted at No. 1 despite strong residual demand for the previous week's two top sellers. After two weeks in stores, Buena Vista's The Little Mermaid Platinum Edition remained at No. 2, and 20th Century Fox's X-Men: The Last Stand slipped only slightly from No. 1 to No. 3.

In rental stores, Click generated an estimated $9.8 million in its first week, bumping the previous week's top renter, "Last Stand," to No. 2 on Home Media Retailing's rental chart. The third "X-Men" film, however, suffered only a 17% decline in rental revenue from the previous week; after two weeks, it has generated nearly $20 million from rental transactions.

Universal Studios' Waist Deep debuted at No. 4 on First Alert, finishing ahead of another new release, 20th Century Fox's Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties.

In this week's DVD releases, Adam Sandler struggles with professional and domestic discord, while Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and Lindsay Lohan find sweet harmony in ``A Prairie Home Companion.''

New releases

``Click'' (PG-13) HH 1/2 -- Adam Sandler has been trying for the past several years to balance his desire for respectability with his need to please those moviegoers who still scream with laughter when a guy gets kicked in the crotch.

Sandler's artistic indecisiveness continues in ``Click,'' a wildly ambitious story that jumps frantically back and forth between low-brow, gross-out material and sweet sentimentality, eventually hitting most of the notes in between.

Sandler plays Michael Newman, an architect who's exhausted from trying to meet the demands of his smarmy boss (David Hasselhoff) and the domestic needs of his wife, Donna (Kate Beckinsale), and their two young children. Enter Christopher Walken as the mysterious Morty, an overly helpful technician who offers Michael a universal remote control that allows the user to edit his or her own life, fast-forwarding through traffic jams and muting such annoyances as whiny, self-pitying friends.

There's enormous potential for humor and heartwarming situations in ``Click,'' although the filmmakers only hit their intended targets about 30 percent of the time. Viewers may exercise their own remote controls to jump directly to ``Click's'' best scenes and quickly skip past the movie's many awkward sections.

-- James Sanford,

Kalamazoo Gazette

``A Prairie Home Companion'' (PG) HHH 1/2 -- It may be called ``A Prairie Home Companion,'' but director Robert Altman's film owes at least as much to his 1975 classic ``Nashville'' as it does to the long-running Garrison Keillor radio show. While ``Prairie'' may not be as complex as ``Nashville'' was, it follows a similar blueprint: Bring together a diverse cast of characters united by a common interest, expose their secret ambitions or fears, or both, and give them a bunch of rousing songs to sing.

Lily Tomlin (a ``Nashville'' alum), Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly and Lindsay Lohan play musicians who've come to perform on what's supposed to be the final installment of ``A Prairie Home Companion.'' The evening is heavy with memories, both sweet and sad.

Sony Pictures has recently released the first 50GB Blu-Ray disc for Click, the recent Adam Sandler comedy. Black Hawk Down, Sony's second 50GB-er will release on November 14, and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby will hit shelves on December 12. The only two other studios that have announced a 50GB disc are 20th Century Fox, and Lionsgate, each with one 50GB release coming up in the next month. Will anyone even care to notice?

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Consumers will be able to buy the first 50GB Blu-ray Disc -- which boasts twice the capacity of a regular disc -- when Sony Pictures releases the Adam Sandler comedy "Click" on Tuesday.

The dual-layer disc promises to deliver the interactivity and extras that backers of the next-generation, high-definition optical-disc format had been promising since the format launched in June. Sony made the announcement Friday in Century City at the High Def 101 Conference.

"Click" is one of three 50GB Blu-ray Discs in the studio's pipeline. The others are Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down," coming November 14, and "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," due December 12.

Only two other studios have announced a 50GB disc: 20th Century Fox is releasing "Kingdom of Heaven" on November 14, and Lionsgate is preparing a dual-layer Blu-ray Disc of "The Descent" for a December release. Warner Bros. is expected to announce that its next wave of Blu-ray titles, hitting stores October 31, will include one or more dual-layer discs.

Because of its greater capacity, the Blu-ray Disc of "Click" will include all the bonus features from the DVD, in high-definition, as well as uncompressed PCM (pulse code modulation) audio.

Bonus features include an audio commentary with star Adam Sandler, director Frank Coraci, executive producer Tim Herlihy and writer Steve Koren; four deleted scenes; and seven featurettes, including a documentary on the film's special effects and a "Director's Take."

"Black Hawk" will be the first title to feature Sony's new "Blu-Wizard" playlist technology, which lets viewers customize the way they watch special features. Extras include an audio commentary with author Mark Bowden, screenwriter Ken Nolan, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Scott and U.S. Special Forces Veterans '93 as well as six making-of documentaries exploring various aspects of the movie's production.

"Talladega" comes with nine deleted and extended scenes, all in high-definition; an audio commentary with director Adam McKay and others; bonus race footage; a gag reel; three interviews; "Ricky & Cal" commercials and PSAs; a featurette on Will Ferrell returning to Talladega; and various other extras.

`Click'

The movie (): Adam Sandler faces a double-edged sword in his career. He makes millions as a comic, but only in rare instances, normally when he works with a prominent director such as P.T. Anderson in Punch Drunk Love, is he given credit as an actor. I didn't, until I began to appreciate his goofy charms in The Wedding Singer, and then realized there were reasons to like his sophomoric side in The Waterboy.

His problem has been reconciling the acting talent he showed in Punch Drunk Love with the goofy frat-boy side. Click (Rated PG-13, Columbia Pictures, $28.99 on DVD) is the closest Sandler has come to achieving that. He portrays Michael Newman, a workaholic architect who is a slave to his boss (David Hasselhoff). His wife Donna (Kate Beckinsale) is frustrated by the lack of attention, and Michael, he's frustrated by the lack of time.

When he's unable to find the household's universal remote control, he goes in search of one at Bed, Bath and Beyond. He finds himself in a mysterious back room talking to Morty, a wild-haired eccentric portrayed by the ever-talented Christopher Walken. That should have been Michael's first sign to run in the other direction. Instead, he stays; he chats.

Morty gives him a little device that changes his life -- a remote control that essentially allows him to control time and manipulate his future. Michael takes to it with too much delight, and soon his life begins to drift away.

It's during that time that Click becomes almost Capraesque, paying homage to It's a Wonderful Life. Given that Sandler already remade one of Frank Capra's classics, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, he probably didn't want to take any heat for having the audacity to repeat one of the best Christmas films ever to grace the screen. Smart move. Although borrowing liberally, Click doesn't imitate. It makes its point, delivers the laughs and shows Sandler can serve two masters and still be, well, Adam Sandler.

For his fans it's a definite buy, but no one should be ashamed to rent it.

The disc ( 1 2): The full-length commentary track employs members of the cast and director Frank Coraci. There are also featurettes with titles such as Make Me Old and Fat and Humping Dogs. (You can tell from those that Sandler will likely never lose his sophomoric sensibility. We'll see how well that serves him when he hits 50.) A group of deleted scenes adds little to the film.

** ** **

`A Prairie Home

Companion'

The movie (): When you can witness Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep singing together, that's a movie worth seeing. For that reason alone A Prairie Home Companion (Rated PG-13, New Line Cinema, $27.99 on DVD) earns at least one viewing, but couple that with Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly as singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty, and you have a film worth watching a couple of times.

The movie is a fictional story about the last night on Garrison Keillor's successful and beloved radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. Keillor, who also appears in the film, wrote it and tries to give it a narrative, but that doesn't really hold your attention. The joy comes from watching an all-star cast -- the film also features Kevin Kline and Lindsay Lohan -- ply their trade.

The disc (): Wisely, the DVD producers play to the movie's strength -- the onstage performances -- on the disc. Here they're extended and more enjoyable. They also toss in a commentary track featuring director Robert Altman and Kline.

** ** **

Short takes: In case you missed it -- and I don't know how anyone with a television could have -- Walt Disney Studios released The Little Mermaid in an edition befitting its classic status. The first release of the animated fish tale was a shrimpy release with no extras. My, things have changed.

This two-disc platinum version features restored video and audio, a host of games, activities and other extras. My only quibble: once again the Mouse House has someone remake a classic Disney tune. In this case, Ashley Tisdale sings Kiss the Girl in a supplemental video. Joy.

** I hope to have a fuller review of Reds next week, but I wanted folks to know that the film makes its first-ever appearance on disc Tuesday.

Adam Sandler is one of those stars who is very likeable, appealing to both men and women. It is fairly likely that most of the movies he appears in will go down very well at the box office.