Just Go with It

Rating:

“Just Go with It” is another step down for Adam Sandler’s career. It starts inside the lethargic world of Sandler and ends within the tired formula of the romantic-comedy genre. It’s a long, slow slide from crudeness to mediocrity. The morons that are the film’s characters are appalling upon the moment of their introduction. Unfunny and mentally incompetent, these people roam around the movie’s dead plot until it’s time for them to learn their life lesson while somehow finding a way to remain stupid.

Most of the film’s first half is devoted to Adam Sandler’s compulsion to fool around. Most of the people are around him should be either a hateful jerk or a dumb stereotype, so his character would blend in with the crowd. He plays a rich plastic surgeon, Danny Maccabee. Danny’s heart was broken many years ago. As a coping mechanism, he pretends to be a depressed loser in front of pretty women. His life is so miserable that the women have no choice but to sleep with him just to cheer him up.

One night, he meets a cute blonde named Palmer. His pre-planned lies result in their physical intimacy. He wakes up in the morning convinced that Palmer and himself are destined to be together… forever. Danny is apparently delusional enough to base his conviction on a one night stand. Coincidentally, Palmer is dumb enough to agree with Danny.

Circumstances require Danny to settle the case with a non-existent ex-wife before he could advance his new romance with Palmer. He goes to his assistant Katherine and asks her to play the part. She is portrayed by Jennifer Aniston, whose starring role in “The Bounty Hunter” helped it become one of the worst movies of 2010. She offers the same contribution to “Just Go with It”, one of the worst movies of 2011. It’s not that she’s a bad actress. Katherine Heigl– now she’s a bad actress. Aniston’s choice of movies just makes her look like one, which isn’t actually much of an advantage.

Anyway, Katherine has two children who, for a price, have agreed to participate in Danny’s scam. These kids are spoiled, selfish, little liars. The movie makes a phony excuse for their existence by taming them by the movie’s end. It suggests that their bad behavior is the result of an absentee father. But the movie resolves the problem by rewarding them with the privilege to be raised by Adam Sandler. Right. Maybe my dislike for the kids is mostly because none of the jokes associated with their characters work. (To be clear and fair to the kids, none of the jokes associated with any of the characters work.)

Adam Sandler’s next film will be “Jack and Jill”, where Sandler will have the sadistic joy of playing two obnoxious, unfunny characters. The movie looks so bad from the trailer alone that it seems it’s gonna give him more than one step down his career.