JUST GO WITH IT

Sadly, Adam Sandler proves, once again, that his movies are woefully deficient when it comes to presenting intelligent, realistic and three-dimensional female characters.

In Just Go With It, we get bimbos and shrews, vixens and villains, and women seemingly devoid of common sense. And I write all this as someone who generally likes Sandler but wishes he’d offer his target audience a teensy bit more substance alongside the silly, slapstick and sophomoric.

Plastic surgeon Danny (Sandler) is kind of an amiable jerk – he not only openly teases his patients but, in his personal life, wears a fake wedding band because he finds he’s irresistible to comely young women when he has it on. They believe he’s married and in a terrible relationship (thanks to the lies he tells) so, of course, they all sleep with him. No strings attached. It’s the perfect arrangement!

Wait. What?

Suspending disbelief enough to buy this premise, we move on. One night, Danny meets his dream girl – a 23-year-old teacher (because it’s a noble, sensible profession that the filmmakers pulled from a file folder of nice-girl clichés) named Palmer (Brooklyn Decker) – but  he isn’t wearing his ring. When Palmer discovers the ring the morning after they sleep together, she freaks... until Danny quickly spins yet another lie. This time, he explains he’s getting divorced and that he’ll soon be a free man. Problem is, Palmer wants to meet his soon-to-be ex-wife to confirm his story, and Danny needs to scramble to manufacture a troubled home life that never existed.

Enter his single-mom clinic assistant, Katherine (Jennifer Aniston), who seems simultaneously repulsed and amused by Danny’s ever-expanding web of deceit and debauchery. He asks her to pose as his Mrs., she reluctantly agrees and soon everyone everywhere is lying about everything... all so Danny can hook up with Palmer, who’s presented as so dim she swallows every mistruth and far-fetched scenario hook, line and sinker.

What follows is a giant group vacation to Hawaii, plenty of panicked cover-ups and several encounters with Katherine’s sorority nemesis, a plastic mean girl named Devlin (Nicole Kidman), who’s vain, self-absorbed and married to her unfortunate equal (Dave Matthews). Along for the expensive ride are Danny’s oversexed cousin (Nick Swardson) and Katherine’s two kids (Griffin Gluck and a wildly grating Bailee Madison), who all help create the illusion of one big, if broken, family.

And, I hate to say it, I didn’t laugh once throughout Just Go With It’s beefy, nearly two-hour running time. Despite being a comedy – and a remake of the Walter Matthau/Ingrid Bergman/Goldie Hawn classic, Cactus Flower -- the movie isn’t really all that funny. There are a few cutesy, smile-inducing scenes, but it was low on the laugh-out-loud scale. Unless, of course, crotch injuries, poop jokes and overwhelming cleavage are you thing, in which case you’ll find plenty to enjoy here. The story is predictable from frame one, and everything that unfolds in Just Go With It feels like it was dreamed up by a couple of teenaged boys.

Sandler and Aniston have been real-life friends for two decades, and their familiarity shows – one of the only things going for this film is the genuine chemistry and warm rapport between its two leads. They’re both likable. They have a natural ease with each other, and I kept thinking how much better the movie would have been had it leaned more towards a mature romantic comedy (or even dramedy). The potential is sitting right in front of them, and there are some sweet moments between the two that hint at what could have been... it’s just too bad those plusses are eviscerated by the giant minus of the otherwise crappy movie happening all around them.