Guess You Shouldn't Just Go With It Tonight
Welp, it may be time to change the Valentine’s Day plan you had to see the movie “Just Go With It” tonight.
Dana Stevens, Slate’s mistress of scathing movie reviews, who to my delight summarized the Where the Wild Things Are movie as “Fuzzy guys build a stick fort, sit inside it, and mope,” has taken her axe to Adam Sandler’s new rom-com. If you happened to see Grown Ups, a movie that made me wonder whether Chris Rock will ever make me laugh again, then you, too, may have groaned when you saw subway trailers for Sandler’s newest. Keep groaning, because word on the street is this ain’t Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Now, I’m not sure how this movie could possibly be bad when it has such talent as Jennifer Aniston (she of The Bounty Hunter, that one was terrific), Brooklyn Decker, Allan Covert (better known as the guy from Grandma’s Boy), and Sandler favorites Kevin Nealon and Dave Matthews. It’s a mystery. But no caustic review have I loved this much since Harry Knowles wrote that, “If shit got The Love Guru on it, shit would wipe it off.” (Another shout to A.O. Scott’s review of that, in which he said, “The Love Guru is downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again.”)
Here are the best lines from Miz Stevens’ takedown:
“a comedy so noxious it seems the product of deliberate malignity…The only acceptable explanation for the existence of Just Go With It is that everyone involved in the creation of this movie—the director Dennis Dugan, the co-writers Allan Loeb and Timothy Dowling, the entire misused and humiliated cast—hates romantic comedy and wants it to die.”
And regarding the flick’s treatment of women:
“Hoo boy. Where to begin? Major plot points hinge on the understanding that Jennifer Aniston is a frumpy old hag who can only earn the longed-for prize of being leered at by creeps when she doffs her clothes to reveal an unexpectedly slammin’ bikini body.”
“This is one of those movies in which no subplot or character provides respite from any other; every time the camera cuts away from one scene, you know another equally unpleasant one is coming.”
Maybe the best option for you and your sweetheart this Valentine’s Day is Gnomeo and Juliet!