REVIEW: Just Go With It

Look you’ve seen this movie before or a variation of it. It’s another one of those cutesy romantic Adam Sandler comedies. Not to spoil anything, but it’s just like all of his other cutesy romantic comedies except that this time he plays an overgrown baby that TWO superhot girls fall in love with. The ads encourage guys to tell their girls that it’s a date movie as if it would be a subversive act, but this IS a date movie.

The basic plot of the movie is that Adam Sandler plays a single guy who uses a wedding ring to trick women into sleeping with him. Palmer, the one woman he actually likes, accidentally discovers the ring on her own leading Sandler’s character, Danny, to lie about having had a previous marriage in an effort to keep her from dumping him. Palmer, played by former Sports Illustrated cover model Brooklyn Decker, suspicious of Danny’s lies demands to meet the ex-wife. So Danny begs his assistant at work Katherine, played by Jennifer Aniston, to pretend to be his wife and the lies roll out of control from there.

The acting is fine. Sandler plays his usual character. Decker and Aniston make sure they look great. Nick Swardson is pretty annoying… by design… I think. There are a couple of decent cameos that I don’t want to spoil.

Is Just Go With It anything great? Of course not, but there are worse ways to spend a Friday evening. The film has its laughs. If you’re not sick of Adam Sandler movies yet then you’ll probably like this one too. But except for a few brief glimpses of Danny doing nice things for Katherine’s kids, we never really get to see why these two women both see past Danny’s poor behavior to fall for him.

The movie features an odd soundtrack full of Police songs including a few remixes and mashups that are probably better than the film itself. So It has that going for it.

The most interesting thing about the movie is that it constantly seems like things are spiraling out of control as it races towards the inevitable moment that Danny’s lies come to light and Palmer learns the truth… Except that moment never comes. It’s an interesting choice but I think it’s one that makes the movie feel a little hollow. On the other hand, if Palmer had learned the truth, perhaps the movie’s resolution may have felt too easy (Though I’d argue since so much is resolved off camera, it’s too easy anyway).

If you want to see it, I say just Netflix it in four months.