Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Friends with Benefits (2011)

Mila Kunis as "Jamie" and Justin Timberlake as "Dylan" in Screen Gems' FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS.We were flanked with the trailers, interviews and dates with the military folk. Did this saturation make me expect more?

Justin Timberlake was okay in The Social Network. After watching Friends with Benefits, I realized that Justin Timberlake is like George Clooney—he doesn’t act as much as play himself.

Head-hunter/recruiter Jamie (Mila Kunis) scores big when she convinces Dylan (Timberlake) to relocated to NYC from LA to take a job at GQ. The two hang out and become BFFs. They have a discussion about having sex sans strings and voila, it’s a friends-with-benefits arrangement. They seem to pull this off for a good long while. During this love fest, we also learn why both Jamie and Dylan are a mess in the relationship department.

Here’s the real mess—Friends with Benefits is lackluster. Even with some the quirky and heavy-hitters like Patricia Clarkson, Jenna Elfman, Emma Stone, Richard Jenkins, Andy Samberg and Shaun White (the snowboarder), this movie still manages to fall short. Even Kunis, who is enjoyable in comedic roles has a hard time. Her lines are read with knee-jerk speed and without authenticity. It takes on too much. Some of the sub-plots were interesting but there are too many doors opened, not enough time (despite being long for a rom-com) and the ending wraps too conveniently.

Director: Will Gluck

Country: USA

Genre: Romantic comedy

Run time: 109

Scale: 3

2 comments:

Bloke said...

You have to admit the "movie within a movie" digs at the "New YorK' rom-com were funny though.

Diana Mivelli said...

I watched it all the way through so yes, I agree it had its moments. The bigger questions is when did you start watching rom-coms?