Just Go With It

Adam Sandler's latest romantic comedy, Just Go With It, is a strange film. It's a combination of things that have worked, and things that have not in his past movies. In defense of the stuff that does work, the movie is bright, pleasant, sometimes very funny, and is lifted up by the natural chemistry that Sandler shares with his lead co-star, Jennifer Aniston. (Who have been friends in real life for about 20 years.) On the other side of the coin, the film is overlong (nearly 2 hours), and features a lot of Sandler's less successful standbys, such as dated gay stereotypes, repeated gags where someone takes a blow to the crotch, and unfunny cameos by Sandler's less famous comic friends.

It's well known that Sandler surrounds himself with his friends in the business whenever he makes a movie, and uses them in almost all of his films. Maybe that's why Just Go With It feels so familiar at times. For all the stuff that does work in the film, it's held back by one crucial problem, and in my eyes, that problem is director Dennis Dugan. Dugan is a veteran of Sandler comedies, having directed five previous ones before this. The guy must know his way around one of the comic's movies by now, but here, his timing seems off. He doesn't seem to realize that he's supposed to be directing a farce filled with mistaken identities, people pretending to be someone else, and telling lies that build to ridiculous extremes. The pacing is too slow and leisurely for a farce. This leads to a strange audience reaction. We like the characters, and the situations seem to be building up to something riotous, but the slow pace holds us (and the film itself) back.

The premise itself is workable for a farce, at least. No surprise, since it's been freely adapted from the classic play and film, Cactus Flower. Sandler plays Danny, a plastic surgeon and general nice guy who for the past 20 years or so has been using a failed marriage to his advantage for picking up women. He wears his old wedding band on his finger, and tells women a sob story about how his made up soon-to-be ex-wife abuses him, hurts him, or generally cheats on him. This is enough to get most women in bed with him for some sympathy sex, which his best friend and co-worker, Katherine (Jennifer Aniston), frequently ridicules him about. Danny's plan for bedding women hits a bump when he meets the sexy young school teacher, Palmer (Brooklyn Decker). Danny wants to get serious with her, but she won't go any further until she actually gets a chance to meet this ex-wife of his. So, he's forced to drag Katherine into the deceit, by having her pose as his ex-wife.

The plot builds from there, as Katherine's kids from a previous marriage (Bailee Madison and Griffin Gluck) get pulled into the lie as well. The kids manage to get some big laughs, especially young Madison, whose character is an aspiring actress, and insists that if she's going to pass herself off as Danny's daughter, she gets to practice her acting skills, and play her role with a Cockney English accent. Other people get involved as well, such as Danny's sex-crazed cousin (Nick Swardson), posing as Katherine's new boyfriend. Through plot points too complex to summarize, the entire group ends up taking a luxury trip to Hawaii together, where everyone has to keep up the facade. This becomes complicated when Katherine's superficial old sorority sister from college (a funny Nicole Kidman) happens to be staying at the same resort. With so many characters posing as somebody else, and trying to keep everything straight, you can picture this material building steam quickly. But the film unwisely decides to crawl, rather than run, to its destination.

Of course, we know the destination in advance. This is a standard and likable romantic comedy, so naturally Danny and Katherine will discover their real feelings for each other while pretending to be breaking up. So, it's the journey to that destination that's important, and for the most part, it's a mixed bag. There's certainly chemistry between Sandler and Aniston, and they have an easygoing repartee that makes it easy to believe that they are friends, and could be attracted to each other. This helps a lot, as does many of the genuinely funny one liners they fling off each other. The cast also seem to be having fun. It's nice to see an actress like Nicole Kidman actually get to let go and be silly, and she embraces it, especially during a hula competition scene she shares with Aniston. Everyone's genuinely likable here, and nothing offends.

So, why didn't I like it more? I think it all goes back to that pesky pacing problem. You know you're in trouble when it feels like you've been watching a movie for well over an hour, and you check your watch, only to learn that only 40 minutes have passed. As likable as the cast is, they are brought down somewhat by the sluggish tone that director Dugan seems to prefer. The movie also suffers from some unfortunate bathroom humor that seems out of place in the film. I understand that toilet jokes are kind of a Sandler staple, but he should have resisted the urge here. So, we're left with a movie that works in a lot of ways, but doesn't in a lot of other ways. I really wanted to like this more than I did, but something was always up on the screen, holding me back.

Just Go With It probably needed another rewrite or two. You can see it working - The chemistry is there, the cast is there, and even some of the jokes are there. All it needed was some trimming for time, and a director with a better handle of the material. As it stands, it's certainly not bad. It just doesn't work enough.

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