Sunday, August 14, 2011

Friends With Benefits (2011)

  Saw this as a double date with New Boyfriend, his friend, and his friend's fiancee.  I was kind of 'meh' on the concept but the execution was surprisingly good.  Reminded me a lot of Easy A, which makes sense since it's the same director.  He also did Fired Up.

There are a ton of cameos in this movie from Emma Stone, Andy Samberg, Masi Oka, Jason Segal and Shaun White, plus great turns from Patricia Clarkson and Woody Harrelson (playing a gay sports editor.  Outstanding.)

The premise is incredibly hackneyed:  two emotionally stunted people decide to sleep together without being in a relationship and end up falling in love with each other which causes them to ruin said relationship and one of them has to make a fool of themselves in public to win the other person back.  You've seen it before.  Hell, there was another movie earlier this year that was the exact same thing.  It's in my queue but it's pretty far down.  #429 to be exact.

Anyway, Mila Kunis is watchable in damn near everything (excpet American Psycho 2 which completely sucked) and she's adorable here.  Justin Timberlake ran hot and cold for me, though.  There were moments where I thought he was great but those were usually when his character or the situation was over the top.  When he was just trying to be a "regular guy" it rang false for me.  That being said, the dialogue is what put this movie from "Eh" to "Thumbs Up".  There are some fantastic one-liners in here and they are delivered non-stop.  I'm going to have to see it at least one more time just to catch the ones I missed while I was laughing in the theater.  And to see Woody Harrelson's gay sports editor again.  Priceless.

There is a bit of genuine pathos in the film coming from Timberlake's family which is provided entirely by Richard Jenkins in a spot-on performance.  I almost wish they had taken the film more in that direction because I think it would have made for a more solid story instead of just an endless series of Mila and Justin rolling around naked.

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