Just Go With It [M]

Upon backing out on the night of his own wedding, Danny Maccabee discovers the ultimate way to meet women: keep the ring on and pretend to be in a dysfunctional marriage. And this all works fine until he meets the girl of his dreams and his little marriage lie backfires. Desperate to keep this girl, Danny enlists the help of his office assistant Katherine who has to pretend to be his soon-to-be-ex-wife. But more lies backfire and before he knows it, Danny is off to Hawaii with the girl of his dreams as well as Katherine and her children for a strenuous weekend that will test the limits of how far he’ll go for love. 

To be honest, I was expecting absolutely nothing from this movie when I rented it out. I’m not the biggest fan of Adam Sandler, I think he’s all right but in small doses, and Jennifer Aniston isn’t my kind of girl either, but I have to say that I was actually rather surprised by how romantically nice and funny this film was. It just goes to show that first impressions are not always correct, you should never judge a book by its cover, and any other clichéd first impressionistic morals that you can think of. 

Upon backing out on the night of his own wedding, Danny Maccabee discovers the ultimate way to meet woman: keep the ring on and pretend you’re in a dysfunctional marriage. And this all works fine until he meets the girl of his dreams and his little marriage lie backfires. Desperate to keep this girl, Danny enlists the help of his office assistant Katherine, who has to pretend to be his soon-to-be-ex-wife. But more lies backfire and before he knows it, Danny is off to Hawaii with the girl of his dreams, Katherine and her two children for a strenuous weekend that will test the limits of how far he’ll go love. 

The story is classic comedy right from the off, that whole truth about how a little white lie can grow bigger and bigger and eventually come back and bite you in the arse instantly gets a laugh. There are heaps of great moments of schadenfreude in this film that both causes the audience to laugh, but at the same time squirm with empathy, as we go “oh no”. 

Although the two names Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston dominate the DVD cover, the real stars of the show were the two children, played brilliantly by Bailee Madison and Griffin Gluck. Both kids gave star performances that were both memorable and wonderfully funny. The other person who deserves some recognition is Nick Swardson who played Eddie. You may remember Nick as Hector the psychofan from Blades of Glory and in Just Go With It, he delivers another hilarious and admirably memorable performance. 

Also starring Brooklyn Decker, Dave Matthews, Kevin Nealon, Allen Covert, Rachel Dratch, and Nicole Kidman (which really surprised me), Just Go With It was a surprisingly good movie that was filled with lies, awkwardness, memorable characters, romance, and all types of comedy. What more can I say? I was really surprised by it.