Just Go with It

TedFlicks Rating:

$11.00 ticket on a scale of $0 to $13.50

ROOTS OF THE CACTUS FLOWER RUN DEEP

The only thing that excites Hollywood suits as much as the prospect of a sequel is that of a remake.  The results often do not justify the excitement.  “Just Go with It,” the latest Adam Sandler vehicle from Columbia Pictures, bucks the trend.  “Cactus Flower,” the 1969 film on which it is based, set the bar high.  Its roots go back to mid 20^th century Paris theater.  As such it should come as no surprise that it has elements of a Feydeau farce.  Abe Burrows adapted it for Broadway and wrote the play Starring Barry Nelson and Lauren Bacall. I.A.L. Diamond of “Some Like It Hot” and “The Apartment” wrote the screenplay.  The principal actors were Walter Matthau, then at the top of his game, the legendary Ingrid Bergman, and a film newcomer who had made a name for herself on TV’s “Laugh-In,” Goldie Hawn.  Accordingly Columbia, Sandler, and helmer Dennis Dugan could easily have fallen flat on their faces.  Fortunately for auds, they did not.

Pic’s premise is simple.  Sandler as single Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Danny wears a wedding ring to attract women, a trick he learned on his wedding night 20 years earlier after discovering that his bride had cheated on him the night before.  The marriage did not last.  A sob story about a terrible homelife and the impossibility of more than a one-night-stand both attract women’s sympathy and protect Danny from commitment.  In “Cactus Flower” Walter Matthau’s character was a prosperous New York dentist.

So far so good — until Danny meets Palmer (Brooklyn Decker) and falls immediately in love.  Her role is based on Goldie Hawn’s hippie.  Forty-one years later, the hippie is a 23-year-old grammar school math teacher, who loves kids and grew up with cheating parents.  She does not date married men.  When she sees Danny’s wedding ring — after spending the night with him on the beach — she turns on him.  He then concocts a story about ending a bad marriage, but he doesn’t count on Palmer’s insatiable curiosity.  She must meet the soon-to-be ex-wife.

That’s where Jennifer Anistonas Katherine (the Ingrid Bergman part) gets her chance to shine.  A single mom, she is Danny’s office manager and nurse.  Deliberately dressed down at the outset (not very successfully), she gets one of Beverly Hill’s most expensive makeovers to look the part of a plastic surgeon’s wife for Palmer once Danny talks her into playing the role.

In a slip out of character Katherine lets her two precocious kids enter the picture.  Palmer just has to meet them, too.  At this point pic transcends itself and goes from being merely funny to hilarious — almost a joke a minute.  To get the kids’ cooperation Danny must submit to blackmail — including a trip to Hawaii demanded by little Michael (GriffinGluck) where he wants to swim among the dolphins — except that he can’t swim.  Minor detail.  Both he and older sister Maggie (Bailee Madison) are pros.  It is to Sandler’s credit that he can hold his own in a scene with kids as good as these — although he has proven that more than once.  Throw into the mix Danny’s goofy cousin Eddie (Nick Swardson), send the six to Hawaii, add Nicole Kidman as Katherine’s sorority nemesis, who just happens to be at the same hotel with her (ultimately) gay husband, sprinkle with sight gags, running jokes, slapstick, doors opening and closing at inconvenient moments and ever greater complications to extend the lies, and pic achieves a farcical lightness and swift pace that tempts one to overlook its few plot holes.

All the principals save Decker play shtick in overdrive.  She functions as a sort of good-looking straight man — beautiful but not all that interesting — certainly not the bubbly kook created by Goldie Hawn.  Those who know its genealogy most likely will guess the ending, but to their credit, filmmakers manage to keep auds guessing until the end.  Aniston brings range and great physicality to her role.  It doesn’t hurt that as a woman on the verge of middle age she has a body that rivals if not surpasses Decker’s, a fact revealed in a swimming scene which serves as pic’s tipping point.  It is there that she starts looking good to Danny.  The pair soon realize that something is afoot between them.  That’s where the suspense comes in.  It’s also where some shreds of credibility fly away, but that may be the cost of compressing so many complications into 116 minutes.

Other than the kids, pic possesses on utter scene stealer:  A flawless 1941 Packard 120 wood bodied station wagon that transports our principals from the airport to their Hawaiian hotel.

Tech credits are more than adequate, including sound recording.  Soundtrack features a very appropriate use of “[wikipop]Every Breath You Take[/wikipop]” by [wikipop]The Police [/wikipop]in a pivotal moment that could, but doesn’t, descend into bathos.  Vulgarity, which is de rigueur in comedy today, is kept to a minimum.  Four letter words are absent, and pic gets a PG-13 rating.  Take the kids.  They could use a laugh.

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Just Go with It on Netflix