Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler in Just Go With It.
By John Thomason
Like Tracy and Hepburn, or Charlie Sheen and blow, Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston are the most unsurprising of pairings.
They are the master and mistress of middlebrow mirth, for whom the three-star review is an unattainable plateau. In fact, it’s hard to believe these two forces of rom-com mediocrity haven’t met-cute over some 15 years of shepherding penis jokes and treacle into our multiplexes. In Just Go With It, the stars finally align, and the result is like watching Frazier and Ali … synchronized swimming.
To be fair, Sandler and Aniston are both perfectly acceptable in this thing, in the same way a machinist is acceptable at snapping together widgets on an assembly line. At no point does either actor challenge him or herself; preparation might have consisted of watching tapes of their old schticks and imitating them.
Their performances are effortlessly banal, and their characters are inexorably shopworn: He plays plastic surgeon Danny, yet another commitment-fearing Sandlerian man-child who exploits a wedding band from a previous botched marriage to lure gullible hotties into one-night stands. She plays Katherine, Danny’s “homely” personal assistant, apparently desexified with librarian glasses.
When Danny’s latest sexual conquest (supermodel Brooklyn Decker, a Barbie doll with a name like a New York sub shop) becomes something more, he needs to realize his mountain of lies to keep her. Katherine and her two kids thus become Danny’s temporary ex-wife and children, all of whom end up joining Danny and his buxom bimbo on a Hawaiian sojourn.
The plot becomes a succession of ludicrous, uncomfortable comic set pieces, each one more implausible than the next (including a scene pilfered from Charade, in which the two leads having to move a coconut up their bodies without using their hands), and we wait with impatience for Sandler and Aniston’s inevitable arc toward real love.
The filmmaker is Dennis Dugan (Grown Ups, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry), a sixtysomething director-for-hire with the sense of humor of hormone-driven 14-year-old boy. Once again, he looks squarely at depth and maturity and proceeds to kick them both in the balls. Most of the juvenile humor in Just Go With It involves either emasculation – testicular harm, erectile dysfunction and secretly gay macho men all rear their clichéd heads – or scatological cheap shots.
Example: Nicole Kidman adds some class to the picture as the nemesis from Katherine’s old sorority, even though her name in the movie, Devlin, has been established as a synonym for excrement in Katherine’s poop-happy family. Her son Michael’s (Griffin Gluck) only apparent personality trait is that he defecates a lot.
Dugan adds some strange spices to his puerile cauldron, with Dave Matthews, Kevin Nealon, Rachel Dratch and sportscaster Dan Patrick (why?) peaking nominal interest while they’re on-screen. Nick Swardson, a genuinely funny character actor, is saddled here with the thankless Rob Schneider role of the buffoonish sidekick. For Danny’s invented life, Swardson pretends to be a Eurotrash Internet sheep salesman wearing mad-scientist spectacles. Yeah, unfortunately, you read that right.
There are three or four actual chuckles in Just Go With It, a couple of minutes’ worth of material aimed at thinking adults. The rest is strictly ear and eye candy for pubescent males. Say what you want about Dugan, but he really knows how to make boobs jiggle.
JUST GO WITH IT. Distributor: Sony; Director: Dennis Dugan; Cast: Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Kidman, Nick Swardson, Brooklyn Decker, Dave Matthews; Rating: PG-13; Opens: Today