Just Go With It

Left with a ring on his finger after a disastrous near-marriage which never reached the altar, Adam Sandler’s LA plastic surgeon has been using the misunderstood-hubby ruse to pick up a string of younger women. That’s fine, until he falls for bodacious-yet-amiable high school teacher Brooklyn Decker, who spots said ring and makes a sharp exit. So begins a fairly traditional situation comedy, where he plans to win her heart by having his loyal nursing assistant, Jennifer Aniston, pose as the wife he’s about to divorce, but once the lies begin, complication piles upon complication.

It’s a tried-and-tested scenario, actually a remake of 1969’s ‘Cactus Flower’, which had philandering Walter Matthau, an Oscar-winning Goldie Hawn and Ingrid Bergman (!) in the Aniston role. The central conceit serves the new version well enough, despite the filmmakers’ regrettable addition of sundry idiotic distractions, including the eminently throttlable Bailee Madison as Aniston’s wannabe actress daughter affecting a Dick Van Dyke-style cockernee accent throughout, and Nick Swardson’s intensely resistible turn as a bespectacled Teutonic ubergeek. Amid the lowbrow frolics with animatronic sheep and errant bowel movements, it’s a surprise to see Nicole Kidman pop up as Aniston’s bitchy college-era nemesis, and although she gamely tries to go with the flow, it’s evidently not her thing. Aniston, on the other hand, makes the clunking script seem better than it is, and gives the movie a semblance of heart, while Sandler delivers his usual one-note whiny ersatz sincerity. Not his worst, but the rewards are fitful.