CAST: Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Kidman, Brooklyn Decker, Bailee Madison, Antoinette Nikprelaj, Nick Swardson,Heidi Montag, Rachel Specter, Elena Satine; DIRECTOR: Dennis Dugan; WRITERS: Allan Loeb, Timothy Dowling; GENRE: Comedy, Romance; LOCATION: Los Angeles and Hawaii; RUNNING TIME: 110 min.
Technical Assessment: 2.5
Moral Assessment: 2.5
CINEMA Rating: For mature viewers aged 14 and above
Former cardiologist turned plastic surgeon Danny (Adam Sandler) plays on different women to get over the trauma of aborted wedding many years ago. He discovers the power of a wedding ring on his finger to win the sympathy of women by pretending to be in an unhappy marriage with a difficult wife. He does not realize that the same fake wedding ring will send him away from Palmer (Brooklyn Decker), a woman he finally falls in love with and likes to marry. Palmer is a family-oriented young woman who works for a children’s institution and does not want to be involved with a married man. Danny is determined to win Palmer back, so he invents another lies and tells her that he is already divorced. The problem is, Palmer wants to meet his “former wife" and eventually the "children". So Danny plans a scheme that costs him money involving his long time clinic assistant Katherine (Jennifer Aniston) and her 2 children from his divorced husband to act as wife and children respectively. As a boss, Adam does not have a hard time convincing Katherine (Jennifer) but not the two children who are so clever to make demands for money and luxury trip to Hawaii to get their cooperation for the scheme. So the show goes all the way to Hawaii. The scheme turns out to be an opportunity of discovery of many things among Danny, Katherine and her two children.
“Just Go With It” is a sex comedy film that appears to make up from the boring plot through an effort to inject a serious family theme at the last part of the story. It was difficult to believe that a popular and rich plastic surgeon can live a lie about his status for the longest time and manages to sleep with one woman to another without being caught. Insertions of twists in the story add up to destructions. The acting does not offer any less with the exemption of Aniston who naturally transformed into the character of a cool clinic assistant and mom to grown up children and finally discovers something special for her longtime boss. The director seems to focus on the delivery of comedy but has the tendency to over do some of the scenes like that of the child in the toilet, the mashing of one-side oversized breast of a woman in the clinic, and the crack of many ‘dick’ jokes. The lighting helps in projecting required emotions in some scenes. The make up and production design in the scenes particularly the settings in the 80’s was not initially good but eventually improved as the film progressed to its ending. Nonetheless, the film has a good cinematography and offers impressive compositions in some of the scenes such as the scenes in Hawaii trip.
In Filipino culture, it is unusual for a single man to pretend that he is married just to play around on women. It is more usual for married man to pretend as single so he can womanize. Morally, neither of the two are unacceptable. The film is about living a life of lies at the expense of women. After victimizing many of them, Danny was trapped but was still able to get away with it. It is difficult to imagine how safe women clients in his plastic surgery clinic from exploitation are. The images of children portrayed in this film as crooked are a bit disturbing too and should not be tolerated. The viewers should be mindful of the context of the children's attitude in this movie that is partly due to parents' separation. Whilst the film ended highlighting the value of family, it did not appear to be the intention for the most part during the entire run of the film. Danny took a long time to recover from his trauma because he finds himself comfortable with lies. People has to be mindful about life's comfort because it may lead to be focusing only to yourself and become insensitive to others. Women and children are human beings and therefore deserved respect their dignity.
