Friends with Benefits Reviews (2011)

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When I reviewed No Strings Attached, the casual-sex-or-true-romance quandary of a romantic comedy, all the way back in the ancient, forgotten past of this January, I stated that there was a better movie bubbling underneath the surface of the film we ended up with, and that sadly, it failed to ever materialize. Friends with Benefits is that better movie. In fact, it's almost exactly the same movie, but with better chemistry between its stars, a more sure-handed director, and a greater awareness of exactly how stupid the genre it exists within can be. It's still got that same cheeseball ending, though.

Friends With Benefits director Will Gluck is actually starting to make a habit of having his cliches and eviscerating them too. He did this to the high school comedy last year with the shockingly intelligent, largely hilarious Easy A. Now he's attempting to do the same to the tired, hackneyed, Katherine Heigl'd genre of the romantic comedy, directing a script that almost assuredly came from the same basic studio pitch sessions as No Strings Attached, but ultimately comes together far better than it has any right to. Gluck doesn't quite avoid indulging in many of the same tropes that he simultaneously seems to be making regular fun of, but I don't think he could have picked two better actors to play out those tropes on screen.

Those actors are, of course, Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, each of whom is fresh off of a star-making turn in a critically-acclaimed 2010 drama (Timberlake in The Social Network, Kunis in Black Swan). Here they're in more casually snarky mode, firing off rat-a-tat R-rated dialogue while flitting around the notion that maybe, just maybe, they might actually be in love with one another, despite their aggressive attempts toward the contrary.

Before they start falling in love, Timberlake and Kunis sit on opposite coasts. He's a successful designer and manager at a major online start-up in Los Angeles, and she's a recruiter tasked with placing high value clients at major corporations in New York. She lures Timberlake to NYC with the promise of an art directing gig at GQ magazine, but as she begins showing the initially reluctant Timberlake around town, it becomes clear that there's more to their chemistry than a strictly professional relationship.

Trouble is, they're both emotionally broken due to myriad family issues and some rather awful recent breakups (as seen in a pair of pretty great scenes featuring cameos from Emma Stone and Andy Samberg). Getting together seems out of the question at the moment, but a greater longing for the physical joys of casual sex provide an enticing proposition: what if they just fuck for fun?

Again, this is almost to-the-letter the same plot as No Strings Attached. But while that film had two actors that generated roughly as much sexual heat as two mannequins in the autumn years of a bitter and unpleasant marriage, Timberlake and Kunis are perfect together. They're sexy when they're sexing, and they're hilarious when they aren't (and even sometimes when they are).

The pair handle the dialogue of Gluck and co-screenwriters David A. Newman and Keith Merryman with rapid-fire aplomb. It's a script that is occasionally bogged down a bit heavily in modern pop-culture references (flash mobs, app jokes, John Mayer references, etc.) not to mention a bit of nostalgic pandering to the late-20s, early-30s crowd (Kriss Kross and Supersonic's "Closing Time" are frequently referenced, the latter most notably in a memorable serenade to Mila Kunis' vagina), and the film's editing suggests an innate fear of anyone ever taking a moment to breathe between sentences. That said, Gluck gets the most out of his actors, and mines a lot of comedy out of sequences that would seem trite and miserably overplayed in other films of this well-trodden genre.

Half of Gluck's theme here is, in fact, this well-trodden genre, and the many idiotic cliches that have plagued it over the last several decades. The kind of stuff that's given women horrible fairy tale romance complexes that have required years upon years of therapy to undo. It's worth noting, then, that for as much as Friends with Benefits actively lampoons the ridiculousness of the romcom's sway over women, it spends equal amounts of time nourishing it.

For instance, after actively making fun of a fake romantic comedy in the film (featuring hysterical cameos from Jason Segel and Rashida Jones) which features a dopey, melodramatic culminating scene at Grand Central Station, the film then proceeds to set every big scene involving the two leads at some major LA or NYC landmark that creates a perfect backdrop for whatever tender, fun-filled, or dramatic moment is going on. For all the talk that Kunis' character gives on how evil romantic comedies can be, she self-identifies as a dyed-in-the-wool romantic, waiting for her prince charming to sweep her off her feet. For all the silly time spent building up these two as emotionally unavailable, there's really no way this can end except with a grand, sweeping gesture that has these two falling back in love, after a love/hate/love again progression.

Again, it's the sharpness of the dialogue, and the strength of the cast delivering it that lifts this movie above the hokey romantic material it pretends it's too good for. There are even all the usual side players, like Timberlake's super-duper-gay coworker best bud (gleefully played for stupid laughs by Woody Harrelson), and the pair's weirdo parents with varying amounts of personal issues and sagely advice to deliver.

Those parents would be played for Big Huge Laughs by most actors, but Patricia Clarkson as Kunis' spacey, perpetually engaged to be drunk mom, and Richard Jenkins as Timberlake's Alzheimer's suffering father, are remarkably good at playing down the goofiness of these out-sized caricatures. Jenkins is especially great in handling a subject that's not terribly funny. Yes, he does randomly take off his pants, and does suddenly become lucid just quickly enough to give Timberlake some perfectly timed advice, but all his scenes avoid any manner of awkwardness. He's obviously a great actor in more serious projects, but even in a seemingly throwaway romcom, he brings something special to the table.

I can't call Friends with Benefits a particularly original film, nor can I proclaim it to be the first romcom in ages to finally eschew cliches in favor of the unexpected. This is a genre that lives and breathes by its ability to deliver to an audience precisely what it wants. In that regard, Friends with Benefits is better than most, in that it delivers both the kind of soapy, predictable romantic arc that proponents of Heigl-dom have declared such affection for, as well as a goodly amount of nod-and-wink sarcasm toward that kind of nonsense that more cynical moviegoers will surely enjoy. Above all else though, Friends with Benefits is a movie featuring two very attractive, very likable leads exuding tremendous chemistry with one another while frequently making the audience laugh. I don't know what more you could ask of such a film.