Just Go With It

The latest in a long line of underwhelming Adam Sandler comedies, Just Go With It casts the actor as Danny – a swinging plastic surgeon who’s spent most of his adult life tricking women into bed by pretending to be trapped in a loveless marriage. But after his latest conquest (Brooklyn Decker’s Palmer) demands to meet his wife, Danny is forced to concoct an increasingly elaborate lie involving his divorced assistant (Jennifer Aniston’s Katherine) and her two small kids (Bailee Madison’s Maggie and Griffin Gluck’s Michael). Director Dennis Dugan has infused Just Go With It with a surprisingly languid sensibility that becomes more and more problematic as time progresses, as the film, weighed down by sequences of an overlong and flat-out needless variety, inevitably transforms from an amusing timewaster to an interminable disaster – with the tedious atmosphere exacerbated by an astonishing lack of laughs. Dugan, working from a script by Allan Loeb and Timothy Dowling, emphasizes comedic asides and set pieces of a shockingly misguided variety (eg Danny’s obnoxiously off-kilter friend, Eddie (Nick Swardson), delivers a long, unfunny speech about sheep) and there’s little doubt that the affable cast is, as a result, wasted to an exceedingly frustrating degree. (It’s also worth noting that Sandler himself contributes heavily to the film’s pervasively stagnant atmosphere, as the actor eschews delivering an actual performance in favor of coasting on his charisma.) By the time the endlessly sentimental and melodramatic third act inevitably rolls around, Just Go With It has certainly confirmed its place as the nadir of Sandler’s progressively underwhelming filmography – which is a shame, really, given that the former SNL star was once a seriously promising figure within the modern comedy scene.

* out of ****