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Just Go With It (Dennis Dugan, 2011)
Adam Sandler, never the most motivated of screen presences, finds a vehicle
suitable to his undersized ambitions in Dennis Dugan’s
Just Go With It. A pseudo-remake of
the 1969 big-screen sitcom Cactus Flower,
Just Go With It barely extends upon
the scenario of its predecessor. In this predictably scripted, often desperate
movie, Sandler plays a plastic surgeon who feigns bad marriages in order to win
one night stands with women who would otherwise be out of his league. One night,
after meeting a young woman (Brooklyn Decker) who he idealizes, he convinces his
plain-Jane office assistant (Jennifer Aniston) to pretend that she is married to
him. Complications naturally ensue, involving children, lies, and bad German
accents. Before long, the action, convoluted as it is, is transposed to Hawaii.
At this point, Just Go With It is
stupid fun, at most. Mostly, though, it is just stupid. Then, the unlikeliest of
events occurs, and Nicole Kidman, of all people, shows up in a role that she
deliciously seizes upon. For the brief time that she is on screen, Kidman gives
Just Go With It a funny bone. Playing
the rival of Aniston’s dowdy single mother, Kidman turns the script’s thinly
conceived caricature into something that feels strangely plausible. Perhaps the
autobiographical element of her character’s marriage to a homosexual man is to
credit, but somehow Kidman manages to be self-deprecating even as she
single-handedly works to save this sinking ship. From making plastic surgery
jokes to hula dancing, she seems willing to do anything it takes to make this
dreck work. In a film that gets so much of its comedy from poop jokes, Kidman’s
skewering of her own icy, determined persona is a genuine breath of fresh air.
Still, Kidman is only present sporadically in
Just Go With It’s second half, likely
leaving viewers as desperate as the film itself to generate laughs throughout
the rest of the run time. Sandler, for all of his public acceptance as a comic
genius, contributes little here, playing something of a straight man to the
zaniness that surrounds him. Even more bizarrely, the film squanders any insight
that might come about from his character’s central lie. As
Just Go With It (a title that is
entirely indicative of the laziness within) winds down, it does so without any
character receiving any form of comeuppance or even a mild moral awakening. It’s
as if everyone involved, with the exception of Kidman, would gladly have you
forget the film the moment it ended.
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02.23.11
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