Just Go With It

Movie: Just Go With It

Genre: romantic comedy

Synopsis: Danny (Adam Sandler) is a very successful plastic surgeon.  Katherine (Jennifer Aniston) is his assistant and longtime confidante.  Adam has commitment issues and wears a wedding ring as a pickup tool – it seems to attract women who share his aversion to commitment.  Things backfire when Adam falls for the beautiful 20-something Palmer (Brooklyn Decker) when he is not wearing the ring.  When she finds the ring in his pocket, she dumps him.  He convinces her that he is married – but getting a divorce.  He has to enlist Katherine to play his soon-to-be ex-wife to convince Palmer that he is available.  His cover-up snowballs and he ends up having to “hire” Katherine’s two kids to play “their” children – and everyone ends up taking a vacation together in Hawaii.  In Hawaii, Katherine runs in to her old arch-rival from college, Devlin Adams (Nicole Kidman).  Katherine starts her own string of lies to try and impress Devlin.

My two cents: A really funny and charming movie.  Adam Sandler’s Billy Madison persona only surfaces a couple of times.  I think it was his best movie since Spanglish.  Jennifer Anniston was as likeable as ever.  I keep reading reviewers criticizing her for always playing to same type of character – but she does it sooooo well.  It was great fun to watch Katherine’s kids outsmart Danny.  And then there is Brooklyn Decker.  While her acting was OK, I would rate the scene of her walking out of the ocean as the girl-walking-out-of-the-water scene I have seen in a movie . . . better than Ursula Andress in “Dr. No”, better than Halle Berry in “Die Another Day”, and even better than Phoebe Cates in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”.  There is also a great hula dance-off between Jennifer Anniston and Nicole Kidman.

Bottom line:  This was one of the funniest movies I have seen in a while. No real dull spots and a great ending.

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The Eagle

Movie: The Eagle

Genre: drama

Synopsis: The movie opens in Roman-occupied Britain in 120 A.D.  Five thousand men of the Roman Ninth Legion were riding into the wilds northern Britain (what we now call Scotland), led by Flavius Aquila.  They were never seen again. Lost, along with the men, was the Eagle of the Ninth – a gold eagle that was the symbol of the Ninth.  Twenty years later, Marcus Aquila (Channing Tatum), son of Flavius, comes to Great Britain as his first assignment as a new officer.  After hearing rumors that the gold eagle of the Ninth has been sighted, Marcus convinces his superiors to allow him to take his slave, Esca (Jaimie Bell), as a guide and journey into northern Britain to try and find what happened to the Ninth, to find the gold eagle and to hopefully clear his father’s name.

My two cents: An interesting movie.  I had never heard before just what the purpose of the Hadrian Wall in Great Britain was.  It was built to separate the “civilized” southern Britain from the barbarians of northern England.  While perhaps not completely accurate from a historical perspective, I found the movie to be entertaining.  It certainly did not make me want to time travel back to England in the year 140 to live under Roman rule.

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