Adam Sandler’s latest movie, “Click,” is as nasty a bait-and-switch as anything ever perpetrated by a Times Square con man. It advertises another sophomoric Sandler comedy full of sadistic slapstick, sexual immaturity, and Mr. Sandler’s braying voice. But “Click” is actually a dark, surreal meditation on life, aging, and the frailties of the human body. The audience I saw it with was reduced to silent terror by the middle of this picture and I could hardly blame them. This film is as weird as summertime blockbusters get.

Mr. Sandler plays Michael, a careerist architect with a hottie wife (Kate Beckinsale) and two overly adorable children. Constantly abused by his boss, Ammer (David Hasselhoff, making a delicious meal of the scenery), he gets a break when he goes to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy a universal remote and winds up in a secret annex to the store. Ignoring all the danger signs – the annex is staffed solely by Christopher Walken, for starters – Michael purchases a remote that allows him to freeze time, rewind to the past, and fast-forward through onerous chores like family dinners, driving to work, and having sex with Ms. Beckinsale.

And here’s where things get nasty. Michael decides to fast-forward to a promised promotion but instead of losing just a few weeks, he winds up racing through an entire year. Even worse, the remote turns out to have a memory function that begins to zap him into the future, faster and faster. At this point the small children sitting around me in the audience began to whimper. Divorce, cancer, obesity, plastic surgery, bad futuristic interior decorating – this is the substance of the largely laughless, utterly fascinating middle hour of this movie. While still making time to kick people in the crotch, the movie tracks the breakup of Michael’s marriage, his alienation from his children, his body’s total breakdown, and the death of his parents. It’s a rollicking weird time that is barely hinted at by the smirking posters and the trailers featuring Mr. Sandler slo-moing a jogger’s bouncing breasts.

Mr. Sandler has worked dark before, most notably in “Punch Drunk Love,” but “Click” is the more mature movie of the two. Whereas “Punch Drunk Love” wore its indie quirks on its sleeve as a desperate sign of authenticity, “Click” is a Trojan blockbuster, a summertime movie with a dark nougat center of angst. This is Mr. Sandler’s most personal film yet, but who knows if that’s a good thing? I find his personality obnoxious and juvenile, but I have to give him credit for smuggling something this heartfelt into the multiplex. In a season of big, dumb, loud movies there’s something moving about watching Michael, age 60, wrestling with the angel of death on his parents’ grave in a Jewish cemetery.