JUST GO WITH IT

JUST GO WITH IT

(Spoiler Alert)

Unlike Cactus Flower, which takes place in a limited number of locations because it mirrors a play that is based exclusively in New York City, Just Go With It takes the actors to a variety of sites.  The story opens right after a wedding; the bride is telling her friends that she cheated on her new husband, Danny (Adam Sandler), the night before.  Out in the hall, the groom, whose huge nose makes him strikingly unappealing, overhears the conversation and leaves.  He goes to a bar where he meets an extremely attractive young woman who complains that she is tired of men coming onto her.  Even though Danny’s looks are uninviting, she is drawn to him because he is wearing a wedding ring.  This clues him into the reality that he can date good-looking women if he pretends to be married and not get his heart broken.   He gets a nose job, becomes a plastic surgeon, and attracts girls like magnets attract metal.  To preclude his conquests’ from feeling guilty, Danny portrays himself as the victim of a drug addicted shopaholic “wife”.


The tactic works well until he attends a party at the home of a patient.  The patient’s son gets cut and Danny removes his wedding ring to stitch up the boy’s wound then forgets to put it back on when he’s done.  Later that evening he meets Palmer (Brooklyn Decker), a pretty young schoolteacher, and an immediate attraction develops between the two: Danny because Palmer is so lovely, Palmer because she can tell when Danny is lying.  They end up spending the night on the beach and get along well until he directs her to get a business card from his pants pocket so she can call him.  Unfortunately, Palmer dips her hand into the pocket with the wedding ring, and when she sees it, she thinks Danny lied about being single and leaves.


Danny’s office is managed by his nurse. Katherine (Jennifer Anniston), a divorced mother with two children, Maggie (Bailee Madison) and Mike (Griffin Gluck).   Katherine and Danny have worked together for so many years each feels free to openly criticize the other; she disparages his dating style and he makes fun of her lifestyle.  The afternoon after Danny meets Palmer, Katherine’s kids come by the office.  Maggie, who speaks with an English accent as an exercise for acting class, hints that Danny should pay her mother more money so she, Maggie, can go to acting camp.  Mike adds that he believes Danny, who does a lot for charity, should send him to Hawaii to swim with dolphins.  Suddenly Mike says he needs to “take a Devlin” and Maggie rushes him to the bathroom.  Danny asks Katherine what that is all about and she explains that she changed the term take a crap to take a Devlin after a sorority sister who always got the things that Katherine wanted; this innocuous conversation becomes a prop that appears in the movie time and again.  


Since he never learned Palmer’s address, Danny tries to get back into her good graces by bringing flowers to her at school.  He apologizes for misleading her about his marital status, explaining that his marriage is bad, so bad that his wife is dead to him, and he is divorcing her.  When Palmer asks his wife’s name, Danny, who is caught off guard, spits out the first thing that comes to mind and answers Devlin. He goes on to say that the last straw was when he caught his wife cheating with her boyfriend Dolph Lundgren, who is not the Swedish actor.  Instead of automatically accepting Danny’s account, however, Palmer says she needs to meet his wife and hear from her that she’s okay with the divorce.
He agrees, then hurries back to his office and pleads with Katherine to go along with the pretense.
 

When she hesitates, he gains her cooperation by taking her shopping at stores like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, where he spends a small fortune on shoes, purses, and clothes.  He even takes her to an exclusive salon to get her hair done.  That night, Danny takes Palmer to dinner and Katherine shows up looking good but acting bad.  She flirts with their young waiter, drinks heavily, and lobs repeated insults at Danny, telling Palmer he has ED, constipation, and terrible smelling flatulence.  He counters by calling Katherine a drug addict and alcoholic that no one would want.  Amid their feuding, Katherine gets a call from her babysitter alerting Palmer to the fact that Danny has kids he’s never told her about. Though his explanation for keeping silent about the children is so flimsy it would sound fishy to anyone with a brain, Palmer merely responds is that she wants to meet them.


When Danny begs Katherine to let him use her kids, she says he’ll have to convince them himself.  To get on Maggie’s and Mike’s good sides, he takes them to Pizza Hut.  After hearing his proposal, the kids agree to the masquerade on the condition that Danny pays for Maggie’s acting classes and buys Mike a Play Station and some games.  A couple of days later Katherine brings the kids to have lunch with Danny and Palmer, but the encounter does not go well.  Speaking with the English accent she was forbidden to use, Maggie calls Palmer a whore, and Mike says he is sad because his dad broke his promise to take them to Hawaii so he can swim with dolphins.  Noting how dismayed Palmer is that he would go back on his word, Danny reverses himself and proposes that they all go the Hawaii together.  To make matters worse, when they are at the airport getting ready to board, Danny’s cousin Eddie (Nick Swardson), shows up introducing himself as Dolph Lundgren and says he must go with them as he cannot bear the thought of being separated from his girlfriend, Devlin.  Danny takes Eddie aside to tell him to get lost, but when Eddie threatens to tell Palmer the sordid truth, Danny agrees to let him come along and cover his expenses.


Since the trip is a last-minute arrangement, Danny doesn’t have reservations, so when they get to the resort, there are only 2 exorbitantly expensive rooms left.  He has no choice but to take both; while he is settling up, Palmer takes the kids to beach.  Danny, Katherine, and Eddie follow and arrive just in time to see Palmer coming out of the water looking like Bo Derek in the movie 10.  That night the group goes to dinner and Palmer asks Dolph what he does for a living.  Since Eddie doesn’t work, he has to make something up, so he says his job is shipping sheep and that he met his girlfriend when she ordered a pelt to use for sexual gratification. Enraged, Katherine goes to the bar to get a drink and runs into none other than her old nemesis, Devlin (Nicole Kidman), who taunts Katherine by stating that she and her husband, Ian (Dave Matthews), have scads of money because he invented the I-Pod.  Danny walks up to ask Katherine to come back to the table, and she introduces him as her husband.  Wanting to talk more, Devlin suggests that they get together for dinner one evening and Katherine agrees, although she has no intention of doing so.


The next day, the adults take the kids to do touristy things.  After hiking and canoeing, they decide to go swimming.  Jealous of all the attention Palmer gets in her string bikini, Katherine announces that she will swim, as well.  Danny starts insulting her, as usual, but when she strips down to her swimsuit, and he sees her lithe figure, he is struck dumb.  Later Palmer states that she wants to go to the spa with Katherine so Danny can spend time with Maggie and Mike.  He resents being stuck watching Katherine’s kids, and is mean to them until they begin describing their dad as a bad father who never has any time for them.  Danny starts to feel guilty and tries to make up for his unkindness by taking them to the pool but Mike refuses to get in because he can’t swim.  To prove he is a better man than the kids’ father, Danny decides to teach him.  Just as the women walk up, Mike dog paddles across the pool and Katherine, who has always considered her boss self-absorbed and shallow, starts to reconsider her opinion.  While Katherine’s watching her kids in the pool, Devlin sneaks up to ask if she and Danny will have dinner with her and her husband.  Unable to think of a reason to refuse, Katherine accepts and convinces Danny to come along by reminding him that he owes her.  He can’t very well tell her no, but says he needs to have an excuse to get away from Palmer. Katherine solves the dilemma by having Eddie ask Palmer out to dinner, and even though the she isn’t too happy about it, Palmer agrees to go.  This frees up Danny and Katherine to dine with Devlin and Ian.  


At dinner, Katherine notes that Devlin and her husband complement one another frequently and asks why they do that.  Devlin says it is a technique they use to keep their love alive and suggests that Katherine and Danny try it.  Danny is uncomfortable at the prospect, but nevertheless finds several positive things to say about Katherine, like she’s the only person he’s never lied to, that he trusts her more than anyone, and that her smile starts his day.  Equally nervous, Katherine hesitates then states that she loves Danny’s sense of humor and his big heart.  The women have always been competitive, so when a hula contest is announced, they both enter and Katherine wins with Danny’s help.  By the end of the evening Danny and Katherine have become aware of what should have been obvious all along: they love each other.  When they get to Katherine’s door, they start to kiss but the kids show up and they have to stop.  Danny goes to his room to wait on Palmer, but he keeps thinking about Katherine.  He heads back to the elevator with the intent of returning to her room but runs into Palmer and Eddie coming back from dinner, instead.  Palmer says that she wants to get married in Hawaii; Danny is trying to figure out how to get out of it when the elevator door opens and Katherine, who apparently was coming to him, is standing there.  Eddie informs her that Danny and Palmer have decided to get married the next day, and Katherine mutely leaves.


 That night neither Danny nor Katherine can sleep.  He calls her to talk, but she cuts him short, stating that she is quitting her job and moving to New York to work for someone else. The next day, Palmer and Danny head off to get married, leaving Katherine alone.  She goes to the bar for a drink where she runs into Devlin.  Sick of lying, Katherine admits that Danny is not her husband.  Devlin, in turn, reveals that her husband made his money, not by inventing the I-Pod, but by suing the Dodges when he got hit by a foul ball, and that she is divorcing him because he is gay.  Just as Katherine sadly muses that her boss is probably married by now, she hears his voice, turns around, and finds him sitting next to her.   He confesses that he couldn’t marry Palmer because he loves Katherine and her children.  As the story draws to a close: Mike gets to swim with dolphins, Palmer finds a new love interest on the flight home, Maggie shines in her acting classes, and Danny and Katherine are together and blissfully happy.


Even though the sets are different, it is easy to spot the similarities between Cactus Flower and Just Go With It: the male leads are successful medical practitioners who pretend to be married in order to date without getting tied down; the female leads are unmarried women who have worked for their bosses for years; the mens’ problems begin when they meet much younger women they really like causing their lies to become liabilities; both female leads agree to help their bosses get the girls of their dreams even though they don’t want to; and when all is said and done, it turns out that the doctors are really in love with their nurses and vice versa.


You can also spot differences that reflect the eras in which the films were made.  For example, Stephanie in Cactus Flower is a single woman who resides with her sister whereas Katherine is a divorcee who has her own home that she shares with two children.  Perhaps the biggest difference, however, is sexual.  Even though Toni and Julian have been dating for a year, the degree of intimacy between the two is never clarified.  In fact, the way Toni measures how much Stephanie loves her husband by the fact that she gave up her virginity to him before they were married, suggests that she and Julian may not be intimate at all.  Since Danny and Palmer share the same hotel room in Just Go With It, however, it is pretty clear they also share the same bed and no one bats an eye.

My final statement on the two movies is that I would encourage you to see both as they are funny and tender at the same time and have happy endings.  That’s all for now.  I will be back in two weeks to discuss a horror film with a sense of humor.  Until then, enjoy as many flicks as you can