Today’s Prayer Focus

Just Go With It

MPA Rating: PG-13-Rating (MPA) for frequent crude and sexual content, partial nudity, brief drug references and language.
Moral Rating: not reviewed
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience: Adults Teens
Genre: Romance Comedy
Length: 1 hr. 50 min.
Year of Release: 2011
USA Release: February 11, 2011 (wide—3,400+ theaters)
DVD: June 7, 2011
Copyright, Sony Picturesclick photos to ENLARGE Copyright, Sony Pictures Copyright, Sony Pictures Copyright, Sony Pictures Copyright, Sony Pictures Copyright, Sony Pictures Copyright, Sony Pictures Copyright, Sony Pictures Copyright, Sony Pictures Copyright, Sony Pictures
Relevant Issues
Copyright, Sony Pictures

in real life, sin has consequences

How do as depicted in this film differ from real life and God’s will for us?

lying in the Bible

truth

lust, lewdness and lasciviousness in the Bible

vulgarity vs. treating God’s creations with honor and love

NUDITY—Why are humans supposed to wear clothes? Answer

love, sex and marriage

love

TRUE LOVE—What is true love and how do you know when you have found it? Answer

marriage

Sex, Love & Relationships
Learn how to make your love the best it can be. Discover biblical answers to questions about sex, marriage, sexual addictions, and more.
Featuring Adam Sandler (Danny Maccabee), Jennifer Aniston (Katherine Murphy), Nicole Kidman (Devlin Adams), Brooklyn Decker (Palmer), Bailee Madison (Maggie Murphy), See all »
Director Dennis Dugan
Producer Happy Madison Productions, Adam Sandler, See all »
Distributor
Distributor: Sony Pictures. Trademark logo.
Sony Pictures Classics
, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment

“Sometime you need a girl, to get the girl.”

Copyrighted, Sony Pictures

Here’s what the distributor says about their film: “In ‘Just Go With It,’ a plastic surgeon (Adam Sandler), romancing a much younger schoolteacher, enlists his loyal assistant (Aniston) to pretend to be his soon to be ex-wife, in order to cover up a careless lie. When more lies backfire, the assistant’s kids become involved, and everyone heads off for a weekend in Hawaii that will change all their lives.”

Volunteer reviewer needed for this movie

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers.


Viewer CommentsSend your comments
Positive
Positive—I don’t get why people are being so darn hard on this movie my family watched, and we all LOVED it, especially Bailee Madison.
My Ratings: Moral rating: Good / Moviemaking quality: 4
Tator, age 22 (USA)
Neutral
Neutral—This movie was really stupid and full of sick humor, but it still made me laugh.
My Ratings: Moral rating: Offensive / Moviemaking quality: 2½
Abby Frankowitz, age 18 (USA)
Negative
Negative—First I would like to say I am a big Adam Sandler fan, but, as a Christian, I find it hard to find movies he is in without some offensive content. I enjoyed “Bedtimes Stories” and wish he would make more family friendly movies like that one.

To top it off the entire movie was filled with sexual immorality. Adam Sandler plays a plastic surgeon in LA that is hurt by a woman whom is supposed to marry. He goes to a bar to drown his sorrows where he meets a beautiful woman who takes pity on him. He finds that pretending he is in a bad marriage causing women to sympathize on him, and ultimately they take him home with them.

He meets this girl at a party, and, of course, sleeps with her the first night. She finds a wedding ring in his jeans and tells him she doesn’t want to see him again. He lies to her and tells her he is getting divorced. The whole movie was about him trying to keep up with his string of lies. He talks one of his employees into poses as his wife and uses her kids to show he is a good family man. They all decide to vacation together in Hawaii. The whole movie was a typical Hollywood story. There is no emotional attachment to the multiple women he is having sex with, and they don’t seem to mind.

I was also disturbed by the constant discussion about masturbation and the size of men’s genitals, even in the presence of children in the movie. One of the kids repeatedly uses the word “h*ll” when talking to the adults, without any correction. The kids express sadness about their real life Dad not having time with them and are told to shut up about it to keep the lies going.

The Bible says sin is enjoyable for a short season, but eventually you will be held accountable for your actions. …in the movies that never happens, but in real life it does.
My Ratings: Moral rating: Very Offensive / Moviemaking quality: 3
Melanie Tilton, age 33 (USA)
Negative—The acting in this movie is okay. There are some funny parts. But the humor is borderline diabolical. Jokes about feces and groping the private parts of a sheep for laughs are just a couple of the examples. After watching this film, you breathe a sigh of relief that its over, and wonder how it ever got its funding. I hope I don’t have the misfortune to pick a movie this bad for a while at least. Better luck next time.
My Ratings: Moral rating: Extremely Offensive / Moviemaking quality: 4
Tim Lemont, age 43 (Canada)
Negative—Once upon a time, the fantasy was that a beautiful virginal princess would be beset with troubles and a handsome brave prince would, after many vicissitudes, free her from her troubles and marry her. They lived happily ever after. The shot would close with a chaste Christian kiss at the end of a marriage ceremony. This film—which is well made and extremely funny—is a social liberal’s fairytale.

Beautiful 23 year old math teacher from a broken home has a one night stand with a rich middle aged plastic surgeon on the beach. She discovers he appears to be married, and then he engages in a Rube Goldberg scheme to convince her he is divorcing, when he has no children or wife at all. He has repeated sex with her in a beautiful Hawaiian resort ***SPOILER*** yet dumps her at the altar, ***END OF SPOILER*** and yet there are no hard feelings [which is not seen, because how could you realistically portray it.]

In real life, the actress is Brooklyn Decker, who is a Sports Illustrated magazine swimsuit model. She has the good sense and apparent good fortune to be married—at what is today a young age, to Andy Roddick—so she is more traditional than her character—a shock in Hollywood! Meanwhile, ***SPOILER*** the plastic surgeon marries a single mother of 2, who is a divorcee and is about 40 or so, compared with the 23 year old. ***END OF SPOILER***

He cherishes her children. The divorcee has been pretending to be his soon to be ex-wife and has holidayed with “their children” with the math teacher and the plastic surgeon and a comedic sidekick.

So what are the lessons from this? Single divorced mothers with children get really rich husbands. This is obviously counterintuitive. It is easy to find men who want to pay for someone else’s children. This is also counterintuitive. Single young twentyish females are not as attractive to men as more mature divorcees with pre-teen children. This is also counterintuitive. No female really cares if you have sex with her, propose to her and dump her at the wedding. It will work out better for her anyway. This is also counterintuitive. Women do not mind if you are bisexual and married to them. [Sub-plot] This is also counterintuitive.

Whilst this a remarkably funny movie, in a coarse way, and is far better comedically than many of Adam Sandler’s recent movies, the whole underlying outlook on life is ludicrously socially liberal. It is an affront to one’s intelligence. I have dealt with merely some of the amazingly stupid aspects of the social liberal’s Weltanschauung on display in this film.

This is not a film your children should see. It sugar coats the very attitudes that have led to the majority of African American children going home to, at most, one parent, each evening, and which has created a permanent underclass with no hope or prospects of advancement. It is rather like watching a really funny movie about slavery—except here the slavery is to the Devil. I would add that just because one realizes the abject stupidity of social liberalism does not mean that one wants the government to enforce sexual morality. There is a libertarian case to be argued here—just as Our Lord values the genuine goodness of the heart—not the coerced conformity of the heathen. But any appraisal of that matter must include a frank understanding of the injury to feelings and human dignity that the social liberal outlook gives rise to and the limits to what government can properly do.

This movie appears to be off in some sort of drug induced haze, albeit a very funny one, where there are no consequences to sexual misconduct. It is a “bill of goods”. The sheep jokes do not worry me. They have existed—coarsely—since the dawn of time. But telling adolescents that there are no consequences to sin is an outright lie. This film is a free re-make of “Cactus Flower”. This film is—in my view—funnier than that film, but that film is much more realistic [albeit it is still way out there], because the young woman is essentially a hippie and is the mistress of the professional man, who pretends to be married. She, also, attempts to take her life.
My Ratings: Moral rating: Extremely Offensive / Moviemaking quality: 3½
Blue, age 52 (Australia)
Movie Critics
…[2/4]… flimsy rom-com farce… potty jokes, sex jokes, breast-implant jokes, bratty-kid jokes, and sheep-CPR jokes…
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer
…this cinematic excursion starts out as a foul, putrid, unfunny mess … and never gets better. …
Paul Asay, Plugged In
…passive-aggressive, naughty but nice, sometimes obnoxious and occasionally quite funny late-winter romantic comedy… The road to true love is paved with a whole lot of lying…
A.O. Scott, The New York Times
…[1/4] …rarely funny… The people in this movie are dumber than a box of Tinkertoys. …
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
…The film won’t have you rolling in the aisles, but several scenes with a surprise co-star will gently tickle your ribs. …Nothing onscreen is believable, nor is it worth the effort of suspending disbelief. “Just Go With It” is not only the title, but the attitude that viewers must bring to every preposterous scene.
Colin Covert, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
…[1½/4] …It’s a rarely amusing movie overwhelmed by grating kids, unfunny sidekicks, half-hearted Sandler funny voices and a co-star who seems more fearful of smiling with each passing year. …
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel