Friends with Benefits

PLOT – Ok, so by now we should all understand how romantic comedies work. But, if we don't: Two people [generally friends] fall in love amidst some random set of circumstances, which we as the audience are led to believe will be funny, heartwarming, and all-in-all worth our ticket cost.

Lesson complete.

In FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, someone got the idea to throw a monkey wrench into this mechanic, by doing something that has been done before. Rich, pretty people who just want sex, but wind up falling in love amidst circumstances that we the audience are supposed to find funny. The writers in this movie also found dated references to other romantic comedies to be funny, which, really just seems to make this movie feel more tragic in the scheme of how hip it tries (again and again) to be. For example Justin Timberlake's character [Dylan] routinely gets the name of the band who sings 'Closing Time' wrong, and bitches that planes pretty much fly themselves now, so they can fire the co-pilot and serve hot meals in coach.

PERFORMANCES – Not surprisingly, no one's gonna win a damn thing here, the least of which is any feeling from the audience. The late entrance of character development with Dylan's senile father, which is clearly an attempt to make his character more than the pretty face he had been through the whole film, comes off as just that. It's almost like it was added by some editor who believed in the writer enough to not want him to be made a fool by his own creation.

Likewise, his counterpart, Jamie (Mila Kunis) is just about as unlikeable as he is. She's a corporate headhunter who wants to live in a romantic comedy. How convenient for the writer? Even more to the point, she plays the part of the rom-com queen who doesn't know what she wants, and goes back and forth on believing her own bullshit, to a clichéd tee.

The real winner here, if there is one, is the extremely gay sports editor played by Woody Harrelson. He steals the show in every shot, and maybe this should have been about him. It could have been just as lame and cliché, but it would be about a man looking for a man to stick him in some weird romantic comedy, which never thought it would be taken seriously by a man.

SUMMMATION – Unless you really, really love your girlfriend, and she has some issue not getting off without seeing a bad movie, stay home.