The Unseen Movie Review - Just Go With It

By Robert Dixter Feb 10, 2011, 1:16 GMT

A man enlists the help of a woman and her kids to land the woman of his dreams. ...more

Adam Sandler is almost 45 years old and still acts like he is 13. This is why we love him. He comes across as the kind of guy who thinks it’s funny to take photos of your sister while she’s sitting on the toilet and then post them on her Facebook page. He has made a career for the past 15 years playing a guy who will never grow up.

But what happens when he reaches the age where it’s not funny to be the older man who doesn’t grow up? What happens when he becomes too old to pull it off and instead of just thinking he’s funny we look at him and 1) worry he might break a hip or 2) feel his antics are more sad than funny.

Luckily, that’s not happening in his new film, Just Go With It (whose title seems to have been thought up by either a group of five year olds who were trying to explain the movie or by a group of country music enthusiasts who need everything spelled out for them).

Sandler is a guy who has to pretend to be going through a divorce from Jennifer Aniston in order to pick up Brooklyn Decker. Of course the lie snowballs faster than Charlie Sheen can inhale powder off a mirror and wackiness ensues.

It seems like every Sandler movie has a preposterous set up to the comedy. He finds a remote control that controls real life, he’s a retired Israeli agent who wants to be a hairdresser, he has to pretend to be gay, or the best is he falls in love with a woman who wakes up every day and can’t remember anything that happened the day before. I’m still waiting for the Sandler film where he goes to work from 9 to 5, has a wife and three kids and worries about how he’s going to send them all to college. Now that has comedy written all over it!

Every Sandler comedy has the same feel to it and that’s probably because he uses the same people on each film. Dennis Dugan directed Go With It, and he also directed Grown Ups, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Big Daddy and Happy Gilmore. You can also expect Allan Covert to pop up somewhere in the film, he’s an old NYU buddy and has been in 14 films with Sandler.

The key to Sandler’s casting is to always pull in a big name as a co-star. Not just someone who can sell tickets but someone you might not expect opposite Adam.

There was Bob Barker in Happy Gilmore, Chris Walken in Click and the ultimate casting coup was Jack Nicholson in Anger Management. Although in his next film, Jack and Jill, Sandler shares the screen with Al Pacino.

After sharing the screen with Jack, Aniston seems like a letdown. Jen has gotten more famous simply for being famous; being married to Brad Pitt didn’t hurt either. She is the one Friend whose film career took off after the show ended, but while her career is doing well her talent never really grew.

Aniston is a TV actress, and even though she’s currently on the big screen she still acts like she’s on the small one. After she delivers a joke she always seems like she’s waiting for a laugh track. It’s not a bad thing to be a TV actress, it’s just where her talent lies.

While Just Go With It seems like a by the numbers Sandler comedy, the fact is that’s how we like our Adam. So I’ll be heading out this weekend to see his new film. Also, Black Swan just didn’t seem like a Valentine’s weekend movie.