Just Go with It has one joke and 117 minutes to tell it. The 2011 romantic comedy stars Adam Sandler as Danny Maccabee, a Los Angeles plastic surgeon who fakes an unhappy marriage to avoid commitment, and Jennifer Aniston as Katherine Murphy, the office manager he drafts into the lie. Dennis Dugan directed. Timothy Dowling and Allan Loeb wrote it. Columbia Pictures released it in North America on February 11, 2011.
The film is a loose remake of the 1969 film Cactus Flower. It grossed over $214 million. It also won two Golden Raspberry Awards, for Worst Actor and Worst Director. Both of those facts belong in the same sentence, and that is the whole problem.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Danny Maccabee and the Wedding Ring
The premise arrives fast. On his wedding day, a deformed Danny overhears his fiancée telling her friends she is only marrying him for his money and is already cheating on him. He walks out and heads to a bar. A woman approaches, notices his ring, and asks about it. He claims he is in an unhappy marriage. It works.
Years later, Danny is a successful surgeon with improved looks. He keeps the ring. He keeps the story. The only person who knows the scheme is Katherine, a divorced mother of two. Every woman he meets gets the same sad married man, and every woman believes it.
That is the engine. A man lies to women for sex, and the movie asks us to find him charming. Sandler has done this before and done it better.
Palmer Dodge and the Beach
At a party, Danny takes off the ring to tend to a child’s scraped knee. Then he meets Palmer, a young sixth-grade math teacher played by Brooklyn Decker. They spend the night on the beach.
The next morning Palmer finds the ring in his pocket. She is furious. Her own parents divorced over infidelity, she says, and she will not be the other woman. Danny has one clean exit here. He does not take it.
Instead he says he is getting divorced from a woman named Devlin Adams, who cheated on him with a man named Dolph Lundgren. That is the lie. Everything after it is the movie.
Katherine Murphy Agrees to Pretend
Palmer wants to meet Devlin. Danny asks Katherine to play her and give the couple her blessing. Katherine agrees.
Then Palmer overhears Katherine on the phone with her kids, Michael and Maggie, and assumes they are Danny’s children too. She wants to meet them. Danny talks the kids into the scheme. They agree, but they blackmail him into taking everyone to Hawaii.
So the film leaves Los Angeles. The lie has now swallowed two children, an ex-wife who does not exist, and a weekend in Hawaii that the synopsis promises will change all their lives.
Dolph Lundgren at the Airport
At the airport the group runs into Eddie, Danny’s cousin, played by Nick Swardson. Eddie is traveling in disguise as “Dolph Lundgren” while running from his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. The invented name has become a real man in a costume.
This is the one structural idea the film has. A lie gets loose and starts colliding with other lies. It could build. It does not build. It repeats.
The cast around the leads is deep on paper. Nicole Kidman plays Devlin Adams. Dave Matthews plays Ian Maxtone Jones. Kevin Nealon plays Adon. Rachel Dratch plays Kirsten Brant. Bailee Madison and Griffin Gluck play Maggie and Michael Murphy. Allen Covert plays Soul Patch. Dan Patrick plays Tanner Patrick.
Kidman is the most interesting name on that list and the film gives her little to do but stand next to Aniston and be the other woman from Danny’s past. That is a waste, and the movie knows it.
The Hawaii Weekend
The tagline is “Sometimes you need a girl, to get the girl.” That is the thesis. Katherine is the girl who gets used so Danny can get Palmer. The film never seriously questions this.
Aniston is the best thing in Just Go with It. She plays Katherine as tired and competent, a mother with two kids and a job managing a man who behaves like a child. When the script lets her be dry about it, the movie works for a few seconds at a time.
Sandler is not doing anything new. He is doing the voice, the shrug, the sudden sincerity. The Razzie for Worst Actor is not a mystery. Neither is the one for Dugan, whose direction here is flat and loose in the bad way. Scenes run long. Jokes land twice when they should land once.
The editing drew criticism on release, and it shows. The film cuts around punchlines instead of into them. The Hawaii section should be the release valve and instead it is more of the same room, more of the same bit.
What the Box Office Proves
Just Go with It made over $214 million. It was produced by Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions, with Sandler, Jack Giarraputo and Heather Parry producing. Production began on March 2, 2010. It was first titled Holiday in Hawaii, then Pretend Wife, then this.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| March 2, 2010 | Production begins |
| February 11, 2011 | Released in North America by Columbia Pictures |
| 2011 | Grosses over $214 million worldwide |
| 2011 | Wins two Golden Raspberry Awards |
The gross is the number that matters to the people who financed it. It is not the number that matters to anyone watching it now. A hit can still be a bad film, and this one is both. The $214 million tells you what Sandler’s name was worth in 2011. The two Razzies tell you what the film did with it.
Reviews were negative, with criticism aimed at the plot and the editing, and some praise for the acting and writing. That split is fair. The acting is often better than the material. Aniston and Kidman and Dratch are all capable of more than this script asks. The writing has a premise and no follow-through.
The Cactus Flower Problem
The 1969 film Cactus Flower had a farce structure and a clock. Just Go with It has a premise and a runtime. The difference is that a farce has to keep tightening, and this one keeps loosening.
The film’s central lie is that Danny is a good guy underneath. The film never earns that. He lies to Palmer for a weekend, uses Katherine, uses her kids, and gets what he wants. The ending asks us to be happy about it. We are not.
There is a version of this movie where Katherine is the lead and Danny is the problem she solves by leaving. That movie would be sharper, shorter and honest. Just Go with It is not that movie.
What is left is a 117-minute comedy with a strong cast, a tired lead performance, and a director who could not find the shape of it. The Hawaii trip changes all their lives, the synopsis says. It does not change ours.
The Razzie wins are the honest record of what this is. Worst Actor and Worst Director, in the same year, for the same film. That is not a fluke or a grudge. That is a verdict.
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