Fridae

Adam Sandler has shown in his recent films a painfully slow, but gradual march to more mature fare from the crude fratboy comedies that made his name. In a radical departure from the fratboy fantasy of obnoxious, immature bachelors readily jumped upon by fair maidens, his more recent films feature obnoxious, immature grown men living in ugly guy hot wife land, where men are still allowed to be as immature and annoying as they wish to be while being jumped on by fair maidens, so long as they end up with the hottie in holy matrimony till death part them both. Never mind if the scripts frequently end up somewhat on the misogynistic side.

That trend shows no sign of abating in this latest offering. Having had his heart broken by his fiancee due to a huge nose that would have been featured on a Nazi propaganda poster, Daniel Maccabee (Sandler) decides to use his wedding ring since to bed as many hotties as possible without having his heart broken by any of them. Years later, as a successful plastic surgeon and having fixed his Nazi Propaganda Nose, Daniel finds himself falling head over heels for a tall, svelte, blonde one night stand (the fantastically-named Brooklyn Decker) named Palmer.

After Palmer believes that Daniel is secretly married but committing adultery with her, Daniel has to convince her that he is going through a painful divorce with his wife while being a responsible father. He gets his assistant, a single mother named Katherine (Jennifer Aniston) to pass as his wife, and her kids as his kids. And before long, along with his annoying cousin Eddie (Nick Swardson) dressed as Katherine’s fiance “Dolph Lundgren”, a pseudo-German intellectual sheep deliveryman (which speaks volumes about the sort of movie this is), they’re all headed for a wacky holiday in Hawaii.

There’s the dreamlike vacation setting, the silly situations, the eye candy, and the unlikely twists and turns that bear no resemblance to real life whatsoever and the condoning of obnoxious behaviour all the way through. But perhaps the reason this comedy is an improvement over Sandler’s earlier output is how little it relies on an obnoxious, passive-aggressive, annoying Adam Sandler character to make it funny. Here, the laughter is brought on by a spectacularly vapid Palmer and Katherine who, years after graduation, is still engaged in a bitter rivalry with her gorgeous college rival, Devlin.

Because Daniel is the one acted on and transformed into someone hopefully normal, the movie mercifully lacks the required suspension of disbelief of other Sandler films where one is expected to believe his obnoxious man-child characters can actually win over the fair damsels. After all these years, Jennifer Aniston is still only a slightly above average actress and comedienne, and Adam Sandler is still mostly annoying when he isn’t cloying, but what a difference such small decisions make. Just Go With It lives up to its name, as an easygoing farce that shows Sandler’s march to cinematic maturity.

Maybe next time he can do a movie where no one stares slack-jawed at a beautiful woman stripping down to her bikini and taking a dip. Just saying.