Michael Newman (Adam Sandler) is a workaholic architect who comes across a universal remote control that allows him to perform functions such as pausing events or fast-forwarding over them in Columbia Pictures' comedy "Click."

Adam Sandler thinks the only way we’ll believe he’s a serious actor is if he makes us forget everything we liked about him when he was funny.

That’s the only possible reason for him to act in and produce “Click,” a sour comedy about an unpleasant guy that morphs into a sour drama about an even less pleasant guy. He’s Michael, an architect who comes into possession of a remote control that can mute his impossibly compliant wife (Kate Beckinsale) and fast-forward his kids through a fight.

The film’s message is obvious — “You have to take the good with the bad” — but it becomes superobvious when the last half cribs from “A Christmas Carol,” skipping through the decades to show Michael how sad his life will be (and how much unconvincing old-age makeup it will involve) if he doesn’t alter his course.

Am I the only one who thinks it’s obnoxious for people who work three months out of the year and get paid $20 million to tell the rest of us that our priorities are screwed up because we don’t spend enough time playing Operation with our kids? Or that I-wish-my-wife-was-silent jokes are about 40 years past their freshness date?

I was willing to hang with the barefoot-and-pregnant style of humor at the beginning because Sandler is such an amiable actor he almost sells it. But the remainder of the movie is so relentlessly grim it actually had me feeling nostalgic about Rob Schneider’s early-in-the-film cameo.

The sad thing is Sandler is a talented actor who has already demonstrated he doesn’t need to turn a comedy into “Death of a Salesman” to show his versatility. He packed more warmth and pathos into clocking Bob Barker in “Happy Gilmore” and snuggling up with Kathy Bates in “The Waterboy” than he does in “Click,” which isn’t half the movie those were.

Hasn’t Sandler seen “Annie Hall” or “Finding Nemo” or “Flirting With Disaster” or “Napoleon Dynamite”? Doesn’t he get that it is possible for a comedy to mean something without spending the last 45 minutes bumming us out?

TITLE: "Click"DIRECTOR: Frank CoraciCAST: Adam Sandler, Christopher Walken, Kate BeckinsaleRATED: PG-13 (language and shadowy sex)GRADE: 2 Stars (out of 5)