Guest blogger Liz Parker is back from an advance screening of "Just Go With It" staring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. Is Jen still on a roll of bad movies? Is Sandler funny great or funny dumb? Let's read what Liz thinks...
I like Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler, but Sandler's movies usually end up being hilarious or really dumb. "Just Go With It," however, ended up surprising me; it was a lot better than I thought it would be, based on what I saw in the trailer. I didn't know that Nicole Kidman stars in the film either, so that was an added plus, as I like her a lot.
Danny (Adam Sandler, "Grown Ups") is set to marry at a young age when he finds out his fiancee is only marrying him because he's going to be a doctor. He drowns his sorrows at the bar one night, while still wearing his wedding ring, and finds out that, strangely enough, women are attracted to a guy wearing a ring. He then uses this as his "game plan" to pick up women, and for the next 20 years or so it works, until he meets someone that he thinks he can settle down with long-term, Palmer (model Brooklyn Decker). She finds the wedding ring in his pocket, however, and he lies and says he is getting divorced; she's satisfied with this but wants to meet his soon-to-be-ex wife. Danny begs his assistant, Katherine (Jennifer Aniston, "The Switch") to pose as his former wife, and she agrees, but soon the web of lies begins to expand more and more, and both Danny and Katherine have trouble keeping up with what is fact and what is fiction.
The movie has a lot of laughs but unfortunately is a bit long (117 minutes, or about a 2-hour runtime) and tends to drag; this could have been kept to an hour and a half or hour and 45 minute movie. Like I said before, I was pleasantly surprised to see Nicole Kidman ("Rabbit Hole") pop up in the film as an old sorority sister of Aniston's character, one whom she hates. Aniston and Sandler do have good chemistry, and the majority of the movie focuses on them rather than Sandler and his young girlfriend, Decker's character. The scenes that take place in Hawaii are beautiful as well.
Maybe see this movie. If you like Jennifer Aniston or Adam Sandler, you will probably like this film. The kids in the movie (Bailee Madison, "Conviction," and Griffin Gluck, "Sideways") are really cute and good at their roles, and Aniston, Sandler, and Kidman all play good parts here too; if the movie had not slowed down as much and/or been as long, I might have given it a "Yes" review. This is definitely one of the better Sandler movies I've seen in the past few years, so if you are looking for a good comedy to see, you most likely will not be disappointed in choosing to "Just Go With It."
"Just Go With It" will be released in theaters on February 11th.
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Liz Parker is a 2009 graduate of the University of Michigan. She currently works as an Assistant Medical Editor for a pathology website. Visit her at her movie blog Yes/No Films