Mutton Much

My exercise after seeing "Just Go With It," starring Adam Sandler as a plastic surgeon and Jennifer Aniston as his single-mother assistant, was identifying a redeeming, unblemished feature. Sandler and Aniston had good chemistry in a couple of scenes -- but their winsomeness was nearly crushed by a leaden script. Aniston's kids, played by Bailee Madison and Griffin Gluck, were talented and cute -- but for some reason ten-year-old Bailee spent most of the movie using a tiresome British accent. Nicole Kidman was great as Aniston's college nemesis, with Dave Matthews as her too-good-to-be-true husband, reputedly the inventor of the iPod -- but that deteriorated into mockery of gay men. Rachel Dratch and Kevin Nealon were funny as plastic surgery victims -- but the depth of the film's insights on the subject was purely cosmetic.

You want unmitigated praise? The Hawaiian resort where the hi jinks unfolded looked very nice. And Nick Swardson, pretending to be a sheep salesman for reasons too complicated to explain, had a great moment after a young woman ran into the restaurant where he and Brooklyn Decker, who plays Sandler's girlfriend, were eating and said that her sheep was sick.What do you do with a sick sheep? Body slams and mouth-to-mouth, of course.

More broadly applied, the Farrelly brothers-style lunacy of Swardson's improvised lamb chops might've resuscitated the movie. Sandler was pretending to be married to win Decker; Aniston was pretending to be his husband; Kidman was still pretending to be all that. A mistaken-identity plot and great cast ought to have made for a lot of fun. But "Just Go With It," a title with no discernible connection to the story, ended up being a description of a comic road not taken.

Seed Corn

All these weeks I thought "The Switch" was a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman and also, thanks to the fuss Bill O'Reilly kicked up, a paean to single motherhood. Instead, it's a vehicle for a touching love story between a father and son, Wally (played by Bateman) and Sebastian (the charming Thomas Robinson), who bond over their shared hypochondria and dad's suggestions for dealing with playground bullies.

Wally was abandoned by his own father and so has been unable to take an emotional stand, especially when it comes to admitting to Kassie (Aniston's character) that he loves her. But long before he realizes they're related, he finds Wally impossible to resist. The best scenes feature just the two of them. Sebastian inherited an adult dose of his father's anxiety but none of his timidity. An animal rights advocate, at nine he refuses to blow out the candles on his birthday cake unless a family friend agrees to adopt a three-legged dog from a local kill shelter. Drawn to Sebastian's gutsy little man, Wally finally discovers his inner one.

While Aniston's not incidental by any means, she's stationery. As with her and many of her leading men (such as those in "Along Came Polly," The Breakup," and "Love Happens"), she abides in sunny, grownup charm while Wally seeks after the wisdom and self-awareness to which men must attain in order to adore and serve her.

More or less in the middle of his heart's 13-year travail, he becomes Wally's father by substituting his sperm for Aniston's intended donor's. He obtains it while gazing at a picture of a prominent member of Richard Nixon's White House staff and indulging his imagination. The movie is at its most unrealistic when it begs us to believe that for the first nine years of Wally's life, he doesn't remember doing this. In equally lame scenes, he plants the seed (in the form of an incoherent drunken delusion) with his colleague and best friend, played by Jeff Goldbum, who conveniently helps him recover the memory years later. That's not to say that the gangly, off-beat Goldblum doesn't do a great job. Besides, he's rooting for Aniston the whole time -- and so are we, because that's what we do.

My Oscar Moment

OMG! So, like, we turn on the Oscars right when Jennifer Aniston is being really natural and funny with Jack Black, and right then they show Brad and Angelina! OMG!!