The current cinema, inevitable Adam Sandler edition

16 Comments

• JREinATL says:

  February 10, 2011 at 9:59 am

  “in my pro­posed biop­ic pro­ject Young Kathryn Jean Lopez”
  If you’re seek­ing investors, I’m totally there.

• MarkVH says:

  February 10, 2011 at 10:09 am

  Wait a second. Nicole Fucking Kidman is in this thing?

• Brian P says:

  February 10, 2011 at 11:38 am

  I haven’t seen it and don’t intend to but I’m guess­ing ‘coher­ently intro­duced plot twists’ is prob­ably exceed­ingly generous

• Glenn Kenny says:

  February 10, 2011 at 11:43 am

  Not to pick nits, but to say that “[e]ach twist of the rather repel­lent situ­ation, no mat­ter how ludicrous, is intro­duced coher­ently and with little fuss” is not pre­cisely the same thing as prais­ing a film for “coher­ently intro­duced plot twists.” But no, please, by all means do not see the film.

• mark f says:

  February 10, 2011 at 12:37 pm

  Ms. Madison would be in the scenes in which the young K‑Lo attempts to change the rules of school­yard King of the Hill to reflect pap­al hier­archy. “I don’t care who’s strongest, the win­ner is the one with the biggest hat! Last girl there is a piti­able slut!”

• Graig says:

  February 10, 2011 at 12:38 pm

  So is Nicole Kidman really in this thing? We can get some kind of first per­son verification?

• Chris O. says:

  February 10, 2011 at 1:00 pm

  “…holds her own in the banter and com­ic tim­ing department.”
  I won­der how she would fare in some­thing a little more styl­ized, or peri­od (which she’s nev­er done) – say anoth­er Coen Brothers “His Girl Friday” homage. I think she’d do well.

• Mr. Peel says:

  February 10, 2011 at 1:02 pm

  Adam Sandler was on Letterman the oth­er night and men­tioned without elab­or­a­tion that Kidman was in the movie. Roger Ebert ref­er­enced her in his review. That’s all I know.

• Ed Hulse says:

  February 10, 2011 at 6:32 pm

  Never mind the oth­ers, tell us about Brooklyn Decker. Hubba hubba.

• Cadavra says:

  February 12, 2011 at 1:18 pm

  In the pre-internet days, Kidman’s appear­ance would be inten­ded as a sur­prise, à la Bill Murray in TOOTSIE. It’s not just a quick cameo.
  BTW, I agree with you (GK) that Aniston acquits her­self very well here, play­ing some­thing closer to her­self and not that Type‑A, ball­bust­ing harpy she’s been doing of late. On the oth­er hand, Abe Burrows and IAL Diamond are prob­ably pin-wheeling in their graves at the wholly extraneous scene where the little boy takes a dump on the sidekick­’s hand. Sheesh…

• christian says:

  February 12, 2011 at 7:00 pm

  I think this review bet­ter nails it:
  “Just Go With It, by con­trast, offers an inter­min­able (and, for our pur­poses, neces­sar­ily incom­plete) lit­any of jokes about breast implants, penile implants, butt implants, erectile dys­func­tion, irrit­able bowel syn­drome, testic­u­lar injur­ies, erec­tions, mas­turb­a­tion, over­weight women, old women, women with big noses, men with big noses, gay men, lazy Hispanic nan­nies, lazy Hawaiian nan­nies, sex with sheep, mouth-to-mouth resus­cit­a­tion of sheep, coconuts rubbed against breasts, coconuts rubbed against crotches, coconuts gripped between ass-cheeks, hands acci­dent­ally placed upon boobs, hands acci­dent­ally placed in toi­lets, hands acci­dent­ally shit upon, pre­co­cious chil­dren black­mail­ing adults, pre­co­cious chil­dren mim­ick­ing cock­ney accents, and pre­co­cious chil­dren dropped on their faces in the mud. There is even a scene, uncon­nec­ted to any oth­er moment in the film, in which an anonym­ous child hurls a soft drink on the belly of his very preg­nant moth­er. Because, you know, it’s funny.”
  http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2011/02/just-go-with-it-a-sad-union-of-saccharine-and-scatological/71126/

• Partisan says:

  February 13, 2011 at 2:54 am

  To be fair, the only Adam Sandler movie I have ever seen is “Punch Drunk Love,” so it is pos­sible that his oth­er movies are among the fun­ni­est ever made. Still I reminded of a pos­sibly apo­cryph­al com­ment Andrei Tarkovsky made when deal­ing with the Soviet film bur­eau­cracy after mak­ing “Stalker: “I am only inter­ested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman.” A high stand­ard, and Tarkovsky had the bene­fit that Bresson and Bergman were still alive in 1979, while Lubitsch and Hawks have been dead for dec­ades in 2011. But still, come on people.

• jbryant says:

  February 13, 2011 at 5:25 am

  Partisan: Did Glenn delete a post that favor­ably com­pared the works of Sandler and Aniston to Lubitsch and Hawks? I’m not see­ing it.
  What I will be see­ing is this movie, on Valentine’s Day, mainly because the gf wants to, although I’ve cer­tainly defen­ded Sandler before, quite recently on this site actu­ally. I won’t rehash all that (and I haven’t seen his post-FUNNY PEOPLE out­put yet), but let’s just say while I’m not par­tic­u­larly heartened by the “lit­any of jokes” chris­ti­an quotes from the Atlantic’s review, neither am I dis­heartened, because it’s not like no one’s ever made a good joke on any of those sub­jects. Fingers crossed.
  Speaking of the Atlantic, do they need proofread­ers over there? “Less then two years ago…” Sheesh.

• Asher says:

  February 14, 2011 at 12:51 am

  I will say that recruit­ing super­mod­els with no act­ing exper­i­ence to act strikes me as a salut­ary phe­nomen­on. Such a cast­ing approach can have its pit­falls (Iman, THE HUMAN FACTOR), but on the whole, I think one of the strengths of the stu­dio sys­tem era were all the act­ors and act­resses with no exper­i­ence whom stu­di­os signed simply because they were good-looking, many of whom developed into very good act­ors. Today, there really aren’t any Gene Tierneys work­ing in film, and I think our films suf­fer for it. If you were mak­ing MOGAMBO today, who would you cast? There’s no one like Kelly, no one like Gardner, no one like Gable in movies now; any­one that good-looking is in mod­el­ing, or TV. You’d end up with Johansson and Portman fight­ing over Clooney – a decent-looking trio, but one that does­n’t at all carry the same sexu­al charge. The prob­lem, though, with insert­ing Decker into a film today is that every­one else is so ordinary-looking; 9/10 of the cast­ing’s very nat­ur­al­ist­ic, and then she’s not. Whereas in clas­sic­al Hollywood cinema, only the char­ac­ter act­ors looked ordin­ary; you get movies where Jeanne Crain is play­ing Gene Tierney’s plain sister.

• Partisan says:

  February 14, 2011 at 1:29 am

  jbry­ant: was my ana­logy not clear? Apparently not. Ok, Bergman/Bresson::Tarkovsky ergo Lubitsch/Hawks::makers of today’s romantic com­ed­ies. Or to put it anoth­er way, wheth­er or not you like “Clue” or “The Great Muppet Caper” or “Shadows and Fog,” (and as it hap­pen I do), or “Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion” or “Everyone says I love you,” (and as it hap­pens, they’re OK, I sup­pose) if your com­edy, romantic or oth­er­wise, is pat­ently inferi­or to these movies, why make it?

• jbryant says:

  February 14, 2011 at 3:14 am

  Partisan: No, I got all that. It’s just that you ended with “But still, come on people,” which to me implied that some people here were arguing the oppos­ite. Or some­thing. I guess I mis­in­ter­preted that. Apologies.
  “If your com­edy, romantic or oth­er­wise, is pat­ently inferi­or to these movies, why make it?” Well there’s a can of worms. Without open­ing it all the way, I’ll just won­der if fol­low­ing that logic might have led to no com­ed­ies made after THE GOLD RUSH or THE GENERAL or THE AWFUL TRUTH or name your pois­on. I mean, I guess MONKEY BUSINESS is inferi­or to HIS GIRL FRIDAY, but I’m sure glad we have both (and I doubt you’re sug­gest­ing oth­er­wise; I think I’m just being dense). 🙂