Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
2/14/11
Adam Sandler has become one
of Hollywood's leading stars by following a simple formula: give
the people what they want. A very hands-on producer and sometimes
co-writer of his films, he knows that the key to box office success is
sending every possible viewer out of the theater feeling like they got
something, if not everything, that they wanted, and that if a couple sees
one of his movies on a date and one loves what they just saw while the
other tolerates it, that's good enough to keep selling both customers tickets
in perpetuity. Sometimes he'll venture outside his lowbrow comfort
zone with something like the excellent Click or by adding a little
more thematic flavoring to an otherwise scattershot comedy like I
Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry or You
Don't Mess with the Zohan. But mostly he stays in his wheelhouse,
and that means movies like Just Go With It. Go, a Sandlerized
remake of the 1968 Oscar-winner Cactus Flower, delivers romance,
PG-13-level gross-out comedy, wacky kids, beautiful babes, a hula contest,
CPR on a rubber sheep and just about anything else the star, writers Allan
Loeb and Timothy Dowling or director Dennis Dugan can think to throw into
the pot. The result is, indeed, entertaining more often than not,
even if an air of check-cashing laziness hangs over the proceedings.
It helps that a below-average Sandler performance is backed by the utterly
director-proof Jennifer Aniston, charmingly game work by the beautiful
model Brooklyn Decker, and the amazing good fortune to land Nicole Kidman
to class the joint up with a very funny turn in a key supporting role.
There were moments when I wanted to take my chances with Click's
magic remote control if it would get me through some of the film's more
painful bits, but on balance, I had a good time at Just Go With It,
a movie that won't prevent me from seeing Sandler's next project.
Mission accomplished.
After calling off his wedding
to an unfaithful fiancée at the last minute, Danny (Adam Sandler)
discovers at a bar the power of a wedding ring and a sad story to generate
easy one night stands with beautiful women. So he makes a habit of
it while building a successful plastic surgery practice with Girl Friday
Katherine (Jennifer Aniston). One day, he finally meets the girl
of his dreams, elementary school teacher Palmer (Brooklyn Decker), with
whom he has an instant connection... until she spots that ring he carries
around in his pants pocket. Unable to either tell the truth or lie
with his usual skill, Danny produces a series of absurd explanations which
he persuades Katherine to go along with: she plays his soon-to-be
ex-wife “Devlin” (named for her hated college roommate), ostensibly as
a one-time proof of his tale. But one thing keeps leading to another
and soon her kids Maggie (Bailee Madison) and Michael (Griffin Gluck) are
pretending to be their kids, Danny's brother Eddie (Nick Swardson) is pretending
to be “Devlin”'s new boyfriend “Dolph Lundgren”, and the whole lot of them
are vacationing together in Hawaii, where the real Devlin (Nicole Kidman)
happens to be staying with her husband Ian (Dave Matthews). Gee,
you don't think Danny's going to start to have feelings for Katherine,
do you?
Adam Sandler has improved
by leaps and bounds as an actor since his days as Opera Man, but you mostly
wouldn't know it on the basis of Just Go With It, seeming to be
only about 75% in character most of the time as he barely suppresses a
relentless smirk. Swardson, meanwhile, seems to be trying to mine
laughs out of how relentlessly unfunny he is (it doesn't work) and Mathews
is mildly amusing on the strength of his continued chutzpah in taking bizarre
and unflattering roles in Sandler movies. That leaves the heavy lifting
for the ladies, and Go's success is mostly attributable to Aniston,
Decker and especially Kidman. While one would hope for better vehicles
for her, I continue to marvel at how immune the former Friends star
is to her surroundings in movies like this: there's a real working-class
sincerity to Katherine, and she's also the only member of the cast who
can convince us that she's a character playing a part while participating
in Danny's con rather than just an actor playing a different role.
And it makes all the difference in the world that she and Sandler have
real chemistry, even if it is more the spark of longtime friends than true
love. Decker's role is beyond awful, and the way Dugan's camera leers
at both she and Aniston in relentless slow motion is kinda pathetic given
how attractive both women are at any speed. But the SI swimsuit model
shows oodles of charm and does everything she can to sell us the utter
improbability of a woman who doesn't seem to have any reason for anything
she does other than that the screenplay demands it, particularly since
her sparks with the star are pretty much nonexistent.
But it's Kidman who really
shocks the film to life whenever she appears. It's hard to find someone
of whom Jennifer Aniston would be jealous, but the statuesque Oscar winner
fits the bill and is nothing less than hilarious in her relentless self-absorption
and absurdly competitive nature. But she also finds a human hook
on the role that makes the Katherine/Devlin relationship ultimately the
movie's most interesting and satisfying. The kids are above-average
as well, with Madison taking a one-note joke of being an aspiring actress
who insists on speaking with a cockney accent when Palmer's around and
makes it work, and Gluck successfully selling some genuine pathos as the
movie's most authentic male character.
The movie's attempt to do
fun things with these characters are a mixed bag, and it never really does
settle on a comic tone, content to simply hit us with whatever it thinks
someone in the audience might find funny at any given moment. And
for every golden bit like the sheep CPR scene, there's a groaner like the
running gag while people use Devlin's name as a synonym for excrement.
Things seem to be slowing down? Let's have a hula contest (the results
of which, I must say, are inexplicable)! Dugan seems to have loaded
up an awful lot of Sting on his iPod, as about half of the movie's Generic
Comedy Pop Tunes come from the former Police frontman. And don't
get me started on some of the incredibly lazy shot choices. The “Palmer
walks in slow motion”/cut to camera pulling in on Danny falling in love
for precisely two seconds transition when they first meet would be a joke
if it were, you know, a joke rather than intended to convey an actual emotion.
In the end, a movie like
Just Go With It almost exists beyond criticism, because you can
shoot holes in its shoddiness all day, but it just keeps insisting on nuzzling
in your lap like an eager puppy. It's so desperate to entertain you
that, odds are, it will as long as you have any tolerance at all for Sandler's
brand of humor. A movie should aspire to more, but if you've already
bought your ticket, it's not too bad. And that is, after all, the
point. |
