Just Go With It

Just Go With It, by Allan Loeb and Timothy Dowling

Once upon a time, about fifty years ago, there was a French play called Fleur De Cactus which was re-written as an English stage play by Abe Burrows, and then turned into a movie starring two famous people and a newcomer from television. The newcomer won an Oscar for her performance and her name was Goldie Hawn. The leads of that movie were Ingrid Bergman and Walter Matthau. The director was Gene Saks and the screenwriter was I.A.L. Diamond.

They were all stellar, first rate talents, the likes of which we'll probably never see again.

The plot of the original movie (I don't know anything about the plays) was that a "swinging single" (Matthau) wanted to get out of marrying his girl-toy (Hawn) so he persuaded his plain jane secretary (Bergman) to pretend to be his wife. She agrees, but suddenly becomes exciting and attractive and Matthau realizes that she is as much of a beauty as his plaything. Thus the title: Cactus Flower.

Cactus Flower was entirely rewritten and renamed, "Just Go With It," which is a hostile and bitchy title, totally representative of Adam Sandler and his not so hidden anger. It should be called "Just Go With It Bitch and Shut The Fuck Up." Somehow, Adam Sandler has found a way of finding writers and projects through his "Happy Madison" company that allow him to express his rage without ever confronting it. He allows himself the freedom to hate without ever explaining why he hates. I could never figure out why P.T. Anderson, who is a great film writer, thought that Adam Sandler was a genius, but after seeing this movie, I think I understand. He is a genius of hidden rage.

Anyway, to get to this pointless remake, the plot is that his secretary is somehow not his subordinate but his equal. He wants to "date" (a.k.a., repeatedly fuck) a twit, but needs to pretend he's married in order to pretend he's getting a divorce. The entire plot hinges on a fuck on the beach (in Malibu, I presume, where people aren't allowed on the beach) behind a large boulder where somehow Happy doesn't take off his shirt but does take off his pants, sleeps with his girl under a blanket pulled from thin air, and then in the morning tells her to look in his front pocket for a business card, whereupon she finds a fake wedding ring and, after this one beach-night stand, becomes outraged that he's "married."

Being gay is so much easier.

From then on it's just a bunch of sentimental and unrealistic schlock: kids speaking like adults and adults behaving like children. The movie is steeped with homophobic clowns: hairdressers, hotel clerks. And the female story-line is no longer about the joy of life, which was what the original movie was: it's based totally on the prominence of the pudenda, which you can actually see in one horrible slow motion-bikini take. I never thought much of Jennifer Aniston and I think now, her major Hollywood accomplishment will be The Girl With No Tattoo. And that WILL be an accomplishment.

After fifty years, this is what it's come to. Very sad. Sad Madison.