Big Fat Lie [Recap and Review]: Just Go With It

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Who here has watched the Adam Sandler movie, “Just Go With It“?

This? Is the Nigerian version of that movie and I will delve more into it after the recap.

The Recap

James plans an elaborate engagement dinner for his girlfriend, Gwen, who looks unimpressed by the gesture.

Unfortunately, his cousin Paul who is supposed to be the waiter for the night ruins the surprise by telling her before she opens the dish to find the ring.

Nevertheless, James still proposes to Gwen, but she rejects his proposal stating that he is too poor to marry her and that she was only with him for the free dresses.

She then stands up to leave, while James falls to the ground pretending to faint as Paul tells him to pay back the money he (Paul) contributed for the purchase of the ring.

In the present day, James is recounting the story to Junior, the son of his friend and colleague Vera in a laundry room.

Vera walks joins them and starts to complain about a hotel guest who didn’t flush the toilet. Junior tells her he is hungry and she directs him to the hotel cook to get something to eat.

When he leaves, Vera and James talk about her situation with Junior’s father, Frank, and how he is an absentee father. While they are talking, Paul walks in to inform them about a celebrity model, Eniola Williams, who’s about to lodge at their hotel.

James gets excited because it is his chance to meet his celebrity crush, but Vera snaps him out of it by reminding him that he cannot afford a woman like Eniola with his 40k a month salary.

While talking, their floor manager walks into the laundry room to order James to go pack the items the Captain had forgotten at the hotel.

As James enters into the room that was occupied by the Captain, he sees the Captain’s naval uniform hung in the wardrobe and decides to put it on. Then he starts to strut and salute in front of the mirror till Eniola walks in on him.

She apologizes for barging in on him, and he introduces himself as Captain Eric Daniels. He then proceeds to ask her out on a date, but she smiles and excuses herself out of the room.

Back in the laundry room, he narrates his encounter with Eniola to both Vera and Paul. Vera advises him not to go with it since he lied while Paul disagrees insisting that James should “just go with it”.

James chooses to take Paul’s advice and goes on a date with Eniola. The date goes quite well, and they spend the night together at Eniola’s room.

The next morning, Eniola is on the phone with her friend while James is still sleeping on her bed. As she is talking, she discovers that Captain Eric Daniels is married with a child on Facebook.

She immediately drops the call and starts hitting James with a pillow on his head, hurling insults at him. So he lies that he is divorced.

She then asks the reason for his divorce, and he tells more lies, saying that his wife was physically abusive to him. Eniola cracks up and then apologizes immediately but continues to laugh.

When she is done laughing, she tells him that she doesn’t believe him. So he asks her what he needs to do to earn her trust, and she demands to meet his ex-wife.

James narrates his dilemma to Paul and Paul suggests that he asks Vera to pretend to be his ex-wife. When James asks Vera to act as his ex-wife, she objects stating that she doesn’t want to get involved in James’ lies.

However, after further persuasion, she obliges but demands for James’ debit card to go shopping.

Later that night, James and Eniola are at a restaurant to meet Eric’s (James’) “ex-wife” Susan Daniels (Vera).

While Eniola sits down, James goes to bribe the waiter to only serve the cheapest food and drinks.

When he returns, Eniola enquires about his ex-wife and James describes her as ugly and having terrible taste in fashion. While he is bashing her, Vera walks into the restaurant in a fancy outfit and with a dog.

Eniola sees her and is impressed, calling her beautiful and classy. James introduces the women to each other, and they all sit down.

Vera then calls on the waiter to serve them the most expensive drink, but the waiter lies that all they have is lemon water. Vera, however, does not believe the waiter and insists.

Her persistence pays off as the waiter gives in and brings a bottle of champagne. Throughout the entire dinner, James and Vera exchange subtle digs at each other.

After dinner, Vera bids both Eniola and James goodnight. As she leaves, Eniola accuses James of being in love with his “ex-wife” but James objects, stating that all he shares with Susan (Vera) is their son. Eniola then demands to meet his son.

The next day Vera enters the laundry room upset, complaining about how she had to play hide and seek while doing her housekeeping rounds. Paul, on the other hand, plays down her concerns leading Vera to hop on his back to fight him.

After the fight, James tells Vera of the new development, and they meet with Junior to let him in on the situation. Junior agrees to do it, and it is a success.

Eniola then plans a three-day getaway with James (as Eric), Vera (as Susan), Paul (as Sisqo) and Junior for them to get to know each other better as a blended family.

Paul (as Sisqo) is pretending to be Vera’s (as Susan) boyfriend who is a paramedic. While at the hotel, Vera meets her secondary school crush Evans which makes James jealous instantly.

The following night, Eniola offers to babysit Junior with James to give Vera, and Paul some alone time. Paul seeing an opportunity tries to woo Vera but gets kicked in the balls by her. She also leaves him alone in the room and goes out on a date with Evans instead.

When James calls Vera and Paul’s room, Paul picks up the phone and complains about how he was mistreated by Vera. He also informs James about Vera’s date with Evans.

The information unnerves James and forces him to sneak out of his room while Eniola and Junior are sleeping and he finds her kissing Evans in the hallway.

When Evans leaves, James and Vera engage in a war of words about their recent behaviour.

The next day, Paul advises James to propose to Eniola which James does. Eniola accepts and tells James that she would like to have celebratory dinner with all of them (James, Vera, Paul and Junior) as they are now her new family.

James goes to the pool to break the news to Vera who on hearing it, does not congratulate him. Her reaction prompts him to kiss her, and after their kiss, he goes back to his room to break up with Eniola.

While Eniola is about to leave the hotel, she meets up with the real Captain Eric Daniels.

My Thoughts

Although this movie was quite funny, it had several flaws that took away from it. First was plagiarism. The entire story was a rip-off of the movie “Just Go With It“.

They copied it so much that it was embarrassing to watch – from James getting dumped by his first girlfriend, the fake marriage, fake kids, to the cousin pretending to be the fake boyfriend of his fake ex-wife – were all copied from “Just Go With It“.

The second flaw was the ending – this movie didn’t have one. I think they ran out of megabytes on their hard drive and called it a day.

The third flaw was how poorly it handled the Vera-James love story. Their kiss by the pool was very anti-climatic, and devoid of any resolution.

The fourth flaw was the soundtrack which was plagiarised from the movie Oblivion. They just stole the entire score by Hans Zimmer and littered the movie with it.

The last flaw was the “one stone kill two birds” tactic they deployed. They used the same guy to play both Evans and Captain Eric Daniels. Why?

My verdict

I give this movie a 1.5 out of 5. It was a funny movie, but then it was heavily plagiarised from a very funny movie. It would have been great if it was inspired by another movie like how Nollywood’s The Visit was inspired by Hollywood’s Carnage.

But this was not the case and therefore I, cannot give high scores to an intellectual thief.