accessAtlanta

The Flick Chick Quick List: Flashback fast-forwarding!

In Click, Adam Sandler's latest attempt to bring his nutty brand of lovingly dumb comedy into mid-30s adulthood, he plays an over-stressed husband and father who gets to control his universe with a magical remote control that rewinds, fast-forwards and pauses his life so that he can manage it better. No more listening to his wife's entire rants or missing every luscious bounce of a buxom woman running by. Basically, it's like having life on a TiVo.

Sony Pictures Read reviews of "Click."

Speaking of that delightful video recording device to which I am addicted, Click's premise presents an intriguing prospect: what if you were able to FF or rewind movies in the theater, so that you wouldn't have to wait for video or cable to permanently excise or re-emphasize certain scenes, or even whole plotlines? I've come up with a list of five movies that would have been better with a little digital edit:

1. Bamboozled (2000): Spike Lee's farce about a black TV executive (Damon Wayans) who masterminds what turns out to be a hit minstrel show is brilliant and brutal. But I'd fast forward the whole ending when assistant Jada Pinkett Smith freaks out and starts waving a gun around. It takes away the power of the real ending.

2. Chariots of Fire (1981): (sung to the tune of Vangelis' Oscar-winning theme) "We're British and runners, we're stoic and deep/but we should cut an hour/'cause we're falling asleep."

3. Sixteen Candles (1984): What's a racist storyline doing in the middle of a teen romance? Messing it up, that's what. So you know that whole putrid, out-of-place bit about Asian exchange student Long Duk Dong (Gedde Watanabe) and his "sexy American girlfriend," a butch girl that he's apparently too dumb to know is supposed to be a cow because she's not skinny? Gone!

4. The Matrix Revolutions (2003): A little romance never hurt most sci-fi adventures, but an apocalyptic orgy/techno rave in the middle of the possible destruction of mankind? I guess that's one way to blow off steam ...

5. Titanic (1997): There was a lovely, moving film in here somewhere, about the price of human pride, the ugliness of classism and elitism, and man's futile attempt to harness nature for his own purpose. And it's hidden under this dumb, bloated love story about these goofy kids who love each other so much they can't figure out that they could both probably fit on the same makeshift raft. In my version, Jack never lets go because he's not in the movie.