Friends with Benefits
Review by Anthony Morris
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Friends with Benefits
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Someone really needs to make a movie about the adventures of that
one amazing bedsheet Hollywood puts in every single romantic comedy.
It's
the one with the supernatural power to somehow cover up all the good
stuff and get wedged between two people who are having sex and yet
somehow it never actually detracts from the characters ability to have
sex.
And if that movie ever gets made, Friends with Benefits
will be the scene everyone ends up talking about, because that sheet
gets a serious workout here.
Aside from being increasingly
funny to spot how it's all bunched up between two people who have
supposedly just had sex, it's also a pretty good symbol of what's wrong
with this somewhat likable but flawed rom-com : while it wants to be up
front about relationships and what actually takes place between two
people without the usual rom-com clichés, in the end it just can't
bring itself to get naked with the truth.
Free-wheeling but
slightly scatty website designer Dylan (Justin Timberlake) and
hard-headed corporate head-hunter Jamie (Mila Kunis) are both fresh out
of failed relationships when they meet, become friends, and decide to
add sex to the mix.
Things won’t get weird, will they? Oh God, they're getting weird.
This
starts off openly mocking the conventions of traditional romantic
comedies – especially the emotive music – and peaks with a flat-out
as-seen-on-tv parody of rom-coms (starring Jason Segal and Rashida
Jones) but then can't figure out a way to keep up the meta-commentary
and still deliver the traditional rom-com ending so by the conclusion
it's as bog-standard as the Katherine Hiegl films it was making fun of.
Fortunately, Timberlake and Kunis are both likable and funny as
characters who aren’t so much definitely single and healed by love as
they are just people trying to take a break from the tangles of
relationships for a while.
This is like going to a bad
restaurant with good friends; if you focus on the people, you might not
notice just how bad everything else is. 3.5 out
of 5
Friends with Benefits
Australian release: 18th August,
2011
Official
Site: Friends with Benefits
Cast: Mila Kunis, Justin Timberlake and Patricia Clarkson.
Director: Will Gluck
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