“Just Go with It” Movie Review

“Just Go with It”

Movie Review

Directed by Dennis Dugan, Allan Loeb (screenplay), Timothy Dowling (screenplay), I.A.L. Diamond (screenplay "Cactus Flower"), Abe Burrows (stage play), Pierre Barillet (French play), and Jean-Pierre Grédy (French play), 116 minutes, Rated PG-13.

By our guest blogger, Matthew Schimkowitz

“Just Go with It” is a screwball comedy gone horribly awry. Weighed down by bad jokes, bland performances and loose directing, Sandler’s latest is an exhausting exercise in patience as it meanders towards its obvious ending. Everything about “Just Go with It” is so hastily slopped together that it works better as Sandler’s Hawaiian vacation video than a narrative film.

The film begins in the mid-'80s, on the wedding day of a big nosed, cuckolded cardiologist named Danny Maccabee (Adam Sandler). After overhearing his wife’s thoughts on Danny and her gentleman caller, Danny calls off the wedding and heads to the bar. Unbeknownst to Danny, his unused wedding ring blessing in disguise and begins to use it to his advantage, picking up young, attractive women with stories of a failed marriage.

Fast forward 20 years, Danny gives up on the heart and becomes a plastic surgeon. He’s still a womanizer until he meets Palmer (Brooklyn Decker), a 23-year-old teacher with whom he shares an actual connection.

Danny avoids his normal tricks with Palmer, but old habits die hard -- Palmer finds Danny’s fake wedding ring. So he does what any sane person would do: Lie. He tells Palmer he’s close to finalizing the divorce, but before he does, Palmer wants to meet his wife.

Enter Danny’s longtime assistant Kathryn (Jennifer Aniston). Danny convinces Kathryn to pose as his horrid wife and bribes her children with a trip to Hawaii to keep their mouth shut and play along. So, the lot of them packs up for the island, as Danny helps them tip-toe around his lie.

The film's plotting is necessarily busy, as these types of comedies tend to be. But rather than take on the quick wit and charm of a Cary Grant comedy – which the film openly mocks – it’s slow, brash humor drags its feet across the plot. By the time Dave Matthews lifts coconut with his butt and attempts to feed it to Nicole Kidman, what remains of your intelligence will promptly check out.

Sandler’s tricks still work, but only with a certain amount of energy, which is largely absent. Out are the surreal outbursts and absurd characters of Sandler’s better work, and in are jokes about facial hair.

The screwball comedy works as a balancing act, invigorated by a tipping of the scale. Yet, “Just Go with It” is so weightless that it’s more likely that you and the other silent theatergoers will do anything other than go with it.

Grade: D