Friends with Benefits Review
By: T.J. “Bananas in the refrigerator? What are you, Puerto Rican?” Mulligan
For anyone still grappling internally with the concept let me spell this out for you: being friends with benefits with someone usually does not work out well. It just doesn’t. Yet, despite the thousands of times it’s been represented in movies and television shows and the thousands of times it didn’t work out for them (or parlayed into an actual relationship, which I still count as not working), people still go through it. Perhaps it’s just gotten to be such a common practice that it’s more like a rite of passage these days. Whatever the case people can’t seem to stop fooling themselves into thinking they can have their proverbial cake and eat it, too. Maybe the same can be said for film executives. This year alone has seen two movies released on the very subject of discussion above: No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits. Despite the creative void these types of movies generally leave, executives still continue to give them the green light. Executives can seemingly get a pass, however, as they aren’t in the business of being creative, they’re in the business of making money. Thus, it’s the cinema-going public that continues to fill the movie houses and plop down cold hard cash to see these repetitious offerings, hoping, much like those benefiting friends, that this time it’ll be different. Is Friends with Benefits different enough to be any good, good despite it’s similarities or just more of the same?
Friends with Benefits is the story of Dylan (Justin Timberlake), an art director from Los Angeles and Jamie (Mila Kunis), an Executive Recruiter from New York City. They meet while Jamie is trying to recruit Dylan for a position with GQ in NYC. After initial reluctance to leave his family and home life behind, Dylan is finally convinced by not only the company’s offer but also the excitement with which Jamie hypes New York. Finally moved in and starting to get the feel of his new position, Dylan is really only left with one companion, Jamie. One night, while lounging and watching a romantic movie together, the two begin to ponder the relationships they’ve seen presented onscreen over the years and why sex has to be so emotionally involved. From there, they decide they can make a sexual relationship with no lingering romantic emotions work, thus becoming the titular friends with benefits. This, naturally, leads to complications as the two are forced to deal with their ever-evolving relationship and their feelings for themselves, others and one another.
The first element of this movie that caught my attention was the look. Director Will Gluck and cinematographer Michael Grady do a fine job of exemplifying everything beautiful in this film. Whether it’s the shoreline on the California coast, the skyline of midtown Manhattan or the litany of good looking people who make up the cast, each is shown in a way that makes them decidedly desirable. What’s more is that the film is shot in a rather conservative way, mostly letting the actors and dialogue carry the load of the storytelling and never stepping on toes by attempting to be overly ambitious stylistically.
The second element to catch my attention was Justin Timberlake’s acting… and I don’t mean that in an good way. Though the man has obviously made strides to up that facet of his many talents (see: The Social Network), he definitely comes off as an actor with plenty of room for development here. His timing seems off though most of the film, denying the dialogue the kick it desperately needed to land anywhere beyond the mildly amusing or poignant range. While it’s not to say he didn’t give a valiant effort (some actors win Oscars when displaying that level of nudity, you know), he falls fundamentally short of the efforts put forth by costars Kunis and Woody Harrelson, who steals every scene he is in as Dylan’s gay coworker Tommy.
The main downfall of this film comes in the plot. Dylan and Jamie spend the bulk of the movie balking at romantic comedy cliches (most notably while watching a romantic comedy movie-within-the-movie starring Jason Segel and Rashida Jones, which I would much rather have seen) only to fall victim to one right after another. While this works fine as a device in general, Friends with Benefits shows that it can’t pull it off convincingly. The actions of every character are predictable as can be and never sway differently all the way to and through the ending, turning it into the very film it slightly skewered for the last hour and a half. Moreover it’s just not very funny, which is a bad move when half of this movie’s genre is “comedy.” Ultimately Friends with Benefits was a so-so one night stand that I just can’t see being in a long term relationship with.
I give Friends with Benefits 2 rage-filled Shaun White cameos out of 5.
