Just not funny enough

Rating: 5/10 (9 August 2015)

Just Go with It is less juvenile than many of Adam Sandler's previous works. So that's good. But in a movie which unbelievably stretches to almost two hours in length there are very few laughs. That's bad. Sandler, for the most part, acts like an actual grown-up. But this more mature Sandler doesn't turn out to be a funnier one. This is a hit-and-miss comedy in which the misses definitely outnumber the hits.
Sandler plays Danny, a successful, and quite single, Los Angeles plastic surgeon who scores with hot women by using a wedding ring to pretend he's unhappily married. He is quite content with his life of meaningless one-night stands. Then, without his fake ring on, he hooks up with the impossibly hot Palmer. He feels a genuine connection with her. But then she finds the ring, assumes he really is married, and refuses to have anything to do with him. Danny tells her he is about to be divorced, Palmer insists on meeting his supposed wife. Danny concocts a plan, having his office assistant, single mom Katherine, pretend to be his wife. But the plan veers off the rails and Danny ends up having to take the ruse all the way to Hawaii. Danny, Palmer, Katherine and Katherine's kids, who Palmer thinks are also Danny's kids, jet off on their tropical adventure. There's also a very annoying fake boyfriend for Katherine. So much deception. But so few laughs. The setup is seemingly there for some decent screwball comedy. But the movie largely falls flat.
The movie is not a total failure. There are some chuckles here and there but no huge laughs. Certainly not enough consistent comedy to maintain the film over its exorbitantly long running time. Sandler is OK. The real standout is Jennifer Aniston, playing Katherine. Aniston has such great comic instincts and is so incredibly charming. It's a shame she doesn't have better material to work with here. Brooklyn Decker is surprisingly good as Palmer. A swimsuit model by trade Decker certainly fills out a bikini quite well. And in this film the camera lingers over her to the extent drooling may be induced from some members of the audience. But Decker proves to be capable of more than looking hot, she actually shows reasonably decent acting chops. She could have a future in this. Heck, she turns in a much better performance here than Nicole Kidman does. Kidman shows up halfway through the film and you'll wish she hadn't. She mails in a terrible performance and her character brings a bad vibe to the proceedings. She's a villain in a film which didn't need one. Nick Swardson, playing Katherine's fake boyfriend with a fake German accent, is grating to the extreme. And just when you think he can't be any worse he has an excruciatingly unfunny encounter with a sheep. The less said about that the better. The children are rather annoying as well. It's hard to produce a likable comedy when there are so many characters you don't like. Sandler, Aniston and Decker do the best they can but everyone and everything else fails. The comedy never hits it big. The plot fizzles out rather quickly and there's more than a hint of obviousness to it. It's not hard to guess where the story is headed. That wouldn't be so bad if there were a lot of great laughs along the way. But those laughs are not there.