Movie review: Just Go With It
Maneuvering a worn formula, a sedate Adam Sandler portrays a plastic surgeon living the American male’s dream. After overhearing his bride talking minutes before his would be wedding, Dr. Danny has kept his heart locked in Just Go with It.
The no-commitment pick-up-artist has the ploys down so smoothly that he knows wearing a wedding ring means more interest. Then, along comes a “hottie” whom he met without the ring … she discovers it the next morning. The fix ’em perfect plastic surgeon now slips and slides on how to convince the much younger Catholic school teacher that he really is NOT married.
Not surprisingly, he enlists the aid of his clinic assistant (Jennifer Aniston) to play his shallow, snooty soon-to-be divorced wife. Oops another lie. And he’s now hiring her two children to complete the scheme. Even his assistant falls to temptation.
Sporting clumsy spontaneous complications, which tilt toward favorable not egregious cliches, the invented family that’s happy and smiling together costs the surgeon a fortune for a marketable script to win his 23-year-old blonde conquest, Palmer (Brooklyn Decker).
Dennis (Grown Ups, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Happy Gilmore) Dugan has directed Sandler in numerous flicks. For some reason, Sandler’s rich doctor character has a wooden yes man attitude when reacting to significant people in his life. Sandler’s more laid back than his Zohan persona, which obviously comes without the secret agent turned hair stylist novelty.
Watch for the school corridor fornication shame by a young student, a mob-inspired negotiation session with Aniston’s on-screen kids, Jennifer’s shopping spree, a swimwear scene reminiscent of Bo Derek’s in 10, sheep CPR (no Sandler) and Aniston and Nicole Kidman in a hula hoop contest. And, in all these key scenes, Sandler himself is just gravy for the female in the scenes.
If you’re tempted, however, to compare Just Go with It with the 1969 film Cactus Flower, well, don’t. The latter is about a commitment-phobic health professional (Walter Matthau in the 1969 film) with Ingrid Bergman and Goldie Hawn playing the Aniston/Palmer roles. No remake here, and, if so, the acting talents in the original out one-line and out-shtick all of the 21st Century stand-ins.
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