Just Go with It Review: Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston Have Chemistry, But the Lie Runs Too Long

Adam Sandler plays a dentist who fakes a divorce so he can marry his daughter off to a rich guy. That is the setup for “Just Go with It,” a comedy about love, lies and the strange rules of dating in your late forties. The movie opens with Sandler’s Dr. Peter Highman lying to everyone about his marital status. He tells his patients he is divorced, his friends he is happily married, and his daughter he is still single. The lie holds until he meets Jennifer Aniston’s Liz, a therapist whose son is dating his daughter. They fall in love, and the movie spends the next hour and a half trying to figure out how to make that work without anyone finding out the truth.

The problem is that the premise is thin. Sandler and Aniston have real chemistry, but the script keeps moving the goalposts. The movie is not really about whether Peter can keep his lie intact. It is about whether he can get Liz to fall in love with him while she thinks he is still married. That means the plot keeps adding complications: a nosy nurse, a jealous ex-wife, and a series of misunderstandings that should not take this long to resolve. By the time the movie reaches its final act, the stakes have shifted so often that it is hard to remember what the joke was supposed to be about.

Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Sandler’s Problem

Adam Sandler has spent his career making comedies about men who are too stupid to know they are being stupid. That formula works well in movies like “Billy Madison” or “The Waterboy.” In “Just Go with It,” he plays a man who is also a liar, but the lying is not funny. It is just a trick the script uses to set up gags about mistaken identity and wrong assumptions. Sandler tries to play it straight, but the material keeps pushing him toward the hammy territory that made him famous. The result is a performance that feels split down the middle: one half sincere, one half desperate for a laugh.

Aniston’s Liz is meant to be the smarter half of the equation. She sees through Peter’s lies immediately, but she decides to pretend she does not care anyway. That decision is never fully explained, and it is the kind of plot device that a better writer would have cut. Instead, the movie leans on it for most of its runtime. The dynamic between the two leads is the only thing holding the picture together, and even that gets strained by the script’s insistence on putting obstacles in their way.

The Lie Gets Out of Hand

The central lie grows larger with each new character the movie introduces. A nosy nurse named Margaret shows up early and becomes obsessed with proving Peter is not really divorced. Then there is Mary, Peter’s ex-wife, who wants her husband back and is willing to sabotage his new relationship to get him. These additions are meant to raise the stakes, but they do the opposite. The more people who know about the lie, the less believable it becomes. By the midpoint, the whole scheme feels like a house of cards waiting to collapse.

The movie also adds a subplot involving Peter’s daughter and her boyfriend, who are engaged. This thread runs alongside the main romance and occasionally intersects with it, but it mostly exists to pad the runtime. There is a scene where the couple fights over money, and a later scene where Peter has to smooth things over. None of it adds anything to the central question of whether Peter and Liz can be together. It just gives the movie more room to wander.

The Running Order

The table above shows how the movie moves from setup to resolution. Each new scene introduces a new complication, and each complication takes the story further from the original idea. The movie is not building to a payoff so much as it is wandering away from one.

The Final Stretch

The climax of “Just Go with It” happens at a beach house, where Peter has to decide between his family and Liz. It is a moment that could have worked if the movie had spent more time establishing why Peter cares about either of them. Instead, the decision feels rushed. The movie spends so little time on Peter’s relationship with his daughter that the conflict barely registers. The audience has not been shown enough of that bond to feel invested in it.

After the climax, the movie rushes to its ending. Everyone learns the truth, and the lies that carried the entire film suddenly stop mattering. The final scenes are meant to be warm and fuzzy, but they land as anticlimactic. The movie has spent so long setting up its central conflict that the resolution feels like a letdown.

What Works

There are moments where “Just Go with It” finds its footing. The scenes between Sandler and Aniston crackle with genuine feeling, and the chemistry between them carries the film when the script lets it. A few jokes land, particularly those that involve Peter’s professional life as a dentist. Those moments are the reason the movie is not a complete failure. Without them, the film would collapse entirely.

The supporting cast is also worth noting. Al Pacino plays Peter’s boss, and he brings a gruff charm to the role. Nicole Kidman appears as Mary, Peter’s ex-wife, and she plays her character with a cold precision that makes her scenes work. These actors are clearly having fun, and their performances are the best reason to watch this movie. They are surrounded by a script that does not treat them with much respect, but they make the best of it.

What Does Not Work

The biggest problem with “Just Go with It” is its lack of discipline. The script keeps adding characters and complications without ever deciding what the story is about. The movie is not a screwball comedy, not a romantic dramedy, and not a straight romance. It is a mishmash of genres that never coheres into a single vision. The result is a film that feels scattered and unfocused, with a plot that could have been tightened into something half as good.

The pacing is also uneven. Some scenes drag on for minutes past their welcome, while others rush through important information. The film is almost two hours long, and it should have been shorter. Trimming ten or fifteen minutes would have helped the story breathe and given the actors more room to land their beats. As it stands, the movie is bloated in the worst possible way: it fills space with scenes that add nothing.

The Verdict

“Just Go with It” is a film that knows what it wants to be but cannot quite deliver on it. Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston have real chemistry, and the movie has some funny moments buried beneath its excess. But the plot is a mess, the pacing is uneven, and the ending fails to justify the journey. It is a movie that is easy to watch but hard to recommend.

The film earns a 3.3 out of 10. That score reflects the frustration of watching a talented cast perform a script that never gives them a clear direction. It is not a terrible movie, but it is a forgettable one. The laughs are real, but they are few and far between. The drama is thin, and the romance is unearned. It is the kind of film that will be forgotten within weeks of its release.

• The opening dentist-office setup is promising
• The coffee-shop meeting between Peter and Liz works
• Al Pacino’s boss character provides comic relief
• Nicole Kidman’s Mary is a memorable villain
• The beach-house climax is rushed and anticlimactic
• The airport ending feels like a shrug

The movie is at its best when it stops trying to be complicated and simply lets Sandler and Aniston play off each other. When it does that, the film is watchable. When it does not, it is a chore. The difference between the two versions of the movie is stark, and it points to a deeper problem: the script is not built around the strengths of its leads. It is built around a lie, and a lie is not a foundation for a good story.

The film’s failure is structural. It is not a case of bad acting or bad directing. The problem is that the central premise cannot sustain a full-length feature. The movie tries to stretch a simple idea into a feature-length comedy, and the seams show. The result is a film that is pleasant to watch in brief stretches but exhausting over its full runtime.

The 3.3 out of 10 is a fair score for a movie that never quite commits to what it is doing. It is a film that is too clever to be a disaster and too unfocused to be a success. It is a middling effort from a studio that should have known better. The talent is there, but the craft is missing.

Adam Sandler · Al Pacino · Jennifer Aniston · movie review · romantic comedy