CEBU, Philippines - In Columbia Pictures’ new romantic comedy “Just Go With It,” a plastic surgeon (Adam Sandler), romancing a much younger schoolteacher, enlists his loyal assistant (Jennifer 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.
At the center of “Just Go With It” is an everyday guy who has let a careless lie get away from him. “At the beginning of the movie, my character, Danny, was going to get married, but he gets his heart broken,” says Adam Sandler. “The night of his heartbreak he happens to have the ring on and a young lady is nice to him, because she thinks he’s married and thinks he’s harmless and won’t do anything that other guys were trying to do. A light goes off in his head.”
The ring becomes his scheme to avoid getting his heart broken: the ladies think he’s off the table, and with no strings attached, no one gets hurt – especially not Danny. But when he meets Palmer (Brooklyn Decker), the girl of his dreams, his lies come back to haunt him – she thinks he’s married. Instead of coming clean, he chooses to weave an even more tangled web: he invents a fake wife – to be played by his long-suffering assistant, Katherine (Aniston) – from whom he can get a fake divorce, clearing the way for smooth sailing with Palmer.
But that’s just the start – as Danny and Katherine attempt to keep up the charade, the lie keeps getting bigger and bigger. “Every lie has a domino effect,” says director Dennis Dugan who most recently directed Sandler in “Grown Ups,” the star’s biggest worldwide hit to date, taking in more than $260 million.
Before Katherine knows it, her kids, Maggie and Michael, have been looped into the lie, but they’ll need a little more convincing… especially when Michael sees a way to turn the tables on Danny. Before he knows it, Danny is on his way to Hawaii with a fake wife, fake kids, his real cousin (who’s playing the fake wife’s fake boyfriend) – all in an effort to convince Palmer that he’s a stand-up guy.
Overseeing the production is director Dennis Dugan, whose films have taken in more than a billion dollars worldwide. Dugan marks his sixth collaboration with Sandler on “Just Go With It” (and recently wrapped production on their seventh, the comedy “Jack and Jill,” in theaters this fall). The director says that he has enjoyed his 15-year relationship with Sandler. “We have a great way of working together,” he says. “I try to figure out what he wants to see, what he wants, what he’s picturing in his head, and then I try to put my spin on it and see how magnificent we can make it.
“There’s a specific way that we work together,” Dugan adds. “Adam and I have a similar approach to comedy. As crazy as it gets, we try to base it in reality. We tell all the actors who work with us that everybody can get as crazy as they want, but we try to keep it all in the same style.”
Opening across the Philippines on Feb. 16, “Just Go With It” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like us at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests. (FREEMAN)