'Just Go With It' and be pleasantly surprised

'Just Go With It'

When Adam Sandler isn't making bathroom jokes or talking like a 2-year-old with a sinus infection, the guy can be disarming.

Witness Just Go With It, a surprisingly breezy and enjoyable comedy from Dennis Dugan, a Sandler pal who has peddled such gruel as The Benchwarmers and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

Here, though, Sandler and co-star Jennifer Aniston seem free to clown, and their chemistry seems as genuine as any A-list mingling in years — save for Brad and Angelina, of course.

Yes, the plot hangs by a thread and the entire movie comes undone if one person acts like an adult. But that may be too much for the man who brought life to The Waterboy.

And the rapport he and Aniston share seems genuine.

Sandler plays Danny, a plastic surgeon and schlub who marries a shrew but discovers post-divorce (and post-nose job) that the gold band is a magnet for bar chicks. That changes when he meets Palmer (the stunning Brooklyn Decker), which prompts him to shove the ring in his pocket to woo her beachside.

Everything's hunky-dory until Palmer discovers the ring in Danny's pocket and naturally assumes he's married.

Just Go With It

* * 1/2 (out of four)

Stars: Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Brooklyn Decker
Director: Dennis Dugan
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Rating: PG-13 for frequent crude and sexual content, partial nudity, brief drug references and language
Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Opens Friday nationwide

Here's where the film takes its first characteristic step: Instead of explaining himself, Danny concocts a bizarre lie that he's separated from his wife and close to a divorce.

To maintain that lie, he persuades his assistant, Katherine (Aniston), to not only play his soon-to-be-ex-wife but to come with her two children to Hawaii to, well, make the movie feature length.

For added heehaws, the normally dependable Nick Swardson comes along to act the ass and delve into some of Sandler's more nuanced scatological humor.

It would be easy enough to chuck this on the pile of disposable Sandler films, of which there are many. But he plays just enough of the antisocial geek — like he did so well in Punch Drunk Love— and his give-and-take with Aniston is so sweet that the scenes work.

Ultimately, it's a mainstream romantic comedy, so you'll know the characters' next moves a half-hour before they do. And there's not a loose end that isn't as neatly tied as a Christmas bow.

But sometimes there's nothing wrong with just going with a sweet-natured date flick.