Big Screen Peter: Just Go with It

Editor’s note: Peter Lewis has agreed to use whatever it is you call his writing style to provide some measure of analysis to those folks who still go to a theater to see a movie.

review by Peter Lewis

“Just Go With It” stars Adam Sandler as Danny Maccabee, a wildly successful plastic surgeon who, despite that success, relies on questionable tactics to pick up women. Instead of honest engagement, he preys on the unassuming and overly compassionate by creating stories about an unfaithful wife or otherwise irreparable marriage.

That is until he meets Palmer, played by model turned actress Brooklyn Decker. After a magical evening on the beach, she finds Danny’s fake wedding ring and thus an improbable story turns ever more improbable as Danny is forced to once more lie. The catch, you see, is that he actually cares for Palmer.

While the concept is not entirely novel, it possesses possibility. Unfortunately, much of that is lost in a dizzying array of implausibilities. In the past, audiences could excuse the inconceivable nature of the situation because there was something real at the heart of the movie. There was a protagonist that wasn’t too dissimilar from them.

When Sandler first began separating himself from Saturday Night Live and started making movies in the mid-to-late 90s, they were all marked by a certain blue-collar mentality. This wasn’t achieved with much erudition, as the humor was most often crude, but the films illustrated aspects of the stratification within America. These films weren’t eye-opening, nor were they particularly realistic concepts, but Sandler seemed to understand “normal” America.

As unbelievable as the stories of Bobby Boucher or Billy Madison might have seemed, there was something with which most of America could connect. And it made Sandler wealthy beyond common conception. What followed was a mish-mash of film projects that pushed Sandler away from his “formula,” from the unflinching (Punch Drunk Love) to the regrettable (The Longest Yard).

Of late, however, Sandler has seemed to return to the territory of his nascence, mining concepts that aren’t terribly dissimilar to “Big Daddy” or “Happy Gilmore.” But instead of a protagonist that is looking forward, age has Sandler looking backward, most usually from a perch of unseemly wealth. Where once there was a drive for something that has romance served as a side-dish, we find Sandler secure, but unhappy.

And it’s there that we find Danny Maccabee, on his vast perch of wealth and one-night stands. At its heart, the film is about emptiness and the schemes and ploys we will utilize to fix that emptiness. Unfortunately for Danny, his stratagems are self-defeating. His insistence on presenting himself based upon falsehoods to secure a release from that emptiness creates brief illusions of fulfillment that are quickly eclipsed by reality.

Wooing Palmer not only creates an ever-thickening trellis of lies to climb, but pushes the film further from its audience as Maccabee burns through thousands of dollars. As his efforts to secure some alone time with Palmer continue to be thwarted by these situational lies, Maccabee finally reaches the realization that was obvious from the outset: his treasure was right under his nose.

There are plenty of laughs to be had in “Just Go With It,” but one can’t help longing for the innocent honesty to be had in Sandler’s earlier work.

• Just Go with It is playing at the Carmike 14 and the Malco Cinema 12 in Fort Smith, and the Malco Van Buren Cinema. Link here for time and ticket info.

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