Friends With Benefits

Directed by Will Gluck

Starring Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis, Patricia Clarkson, Woody Harrelson, Jenna Elfman, and Richard Jenkins

I feel like this is the second time this flick has been made in the last 12 months. There was that No Strings Attached silliness earlier this year, wherein a small, clever, feisty brunette (Natalie Portman) and a tall, dark, handsome, driven professional (Ashton Kutcher) start bumping their junk together under the guise of platonic fluid exchanges devoid of the entanglements and emotional investment that relationships entail. The punchline: they get entangled. What a curveball. Watching these people write movie scripts is like watching George W. Bush play Simon™ on medium difficulty; it’s strong and unsettling evidence that we’re really not so far removed from monkeys and apes and stuff.

Friends With Benefits (down to its title) is a lather, rinse, repeat affair starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake as the titular junk-bumping friends, and while I’ll readily acknowledge a posteriori that the movie itself is limp-wristed, my intentions in seeing it were absolutely, 100% legit. Because I keeps it real like that.

"I just need better pattern recognification!"

Before I get into the bulk of the review, here’s the scoop for all you haters: Justin Timberlake is basically one of the hardest, iciest motherfuckers alive (perhaps second only to Vin Diesel, who admits to playing Dungeons & Dragons and is still somehow hard as fuck). Here’s what I’m talking about. Do you remember when Britney Spears was young? And I’m not talking about the In the Zone, 55-hour marriage young Britney; I’m talking about Fresh Outta High School, Barely Legal Britney. Like back when she wasn’t old enough to sign any legal documents by herself and her parents tossed a coin to see if they were going to throw her into a porno or a music video. Yeah, that young Britney.

Let me tell you: no one who was in high school when her career exploded will ever forget. I was, like, 15 and this girl came out of nowhere and ousted Madonna from my spank bank. All the world’s cameras were suddenly pointed at her as she put on the sexy-but-principled schoolgirl act and claimed she was saving herself for marriage. Naturally, all the other 15-year-old guys at my high school, flush with Maxim subscriptions, steeped in teenage machismo, walking around with their collars popped would say: “Marriage, eh? We’ll see about that.”

And then, before any of us had graduated (or even finished the 10^th grade), Justin Timberlake came along like: “No. Seriously guys. We’ll fucking see about that.”

Better still, once he was done deflowering her, he waited roughly five minutes before calling his publicist and saying: “I want you to get all the liberal Jewish media on the phone and tell them that I did the following things to Britney: T-square, the piledriver, the shocker, the Danza slap, Cincinnati bowtie, Angry Dragon. And then I made her lie in the wet spot.” Since then Britney made Crossroads and married K-Fed and Oscar-nominated directors line up to work with JT. Game, set, match.

If that evidence wasn’t compelling enough: remember when he was dating Jessica Biel? It was when he was touring futuresex/lovesounds and she was all up in his Kool-Aid like: “Hey Justin! Why don’t I come along on tour with you and do the girlfriend thing?! It’ll be great! We’ll have sooooo much fun together! LOL!”

Just imagine being JT and your daily routine being:

1)      Wake up 4 p.m.

2)      Pizza

3)      Play 11,000-person stadium

4)      Have Jess lick the sweat off my body until I am dry

5)      Jack Daniels single barrel

6)      Amphetamines

7)      Mario Kart

8)      Pizza

9)      Sleep

Just look! You could lie down and take a nap on those!

This is Jessica Biel we’re talking about. She has lips like my sofa. And instead of going for it JT told her: “Thanks but I gotta do my own thing right now. And by do my own thing I mean collect venereal diseases.”

 

ICIEST COLDEST MOTHERFUCKER ALIVE

The problem with Friends With Benefits is the same problem that most romantic comedies have: it lacks depth and imagination. It’s a movie that throws no curveballs (I was being sarcastic earlier). Frankly, it’s getting insulting that Hollywood producers feel they can bank repeatedly on solid chemistry and winsome good looks the two leads and people will take the film seriously enough to give it three stars. As soon as the rom-coms of the nineties became tiresome and listless we started seeing more R-rated permutations in cinemas, some of which (like The 40-Year-Old Virgin) were even sublime pictures. Now, six years later, screenwriters and directors have even become complacent in their irreverence, assuming that sexual boldness and a few filthy one-liners are suitable replacement for plot or dialogue or a decent finale.

It’s a particular shame in this case, since this movie has a lot going for it. Woody Harrelson has cemented himself as one of the most likeable onscreen presences and he makes the most of a small role here as JT’s older, wiser gay sidekick. A few other screen veterans make strong appearances, with Patricia Clarkson earning big laughs as Mila Kunis’ wayward, alcoholic mother and Richard Jenkins (surely one of the most underappreciated actors in Hollywood) as JT’s disabled father. Although contrived, there is a charming, touching father/son moment near the end of the movie that makes you wish everyone on board had tried just a little bit harder with Friends With Benefits.

But they didn’t so the movie goes nowhere. Just like my evening went nowhere. I had one lousy beer during this movie and I spilled maybe a quarter of it on the guy next to me. Sorry if I ruined your jeans or your date dude. If it means anything you took it like a champ.

Damage: 2/10 (A couple beers at home pre-movie, 1 x 750 Stella Artois during)

Boozy rating: 2/10 (Martyn kept glaring at me during the flick and will never let me off the hook. From now on, every time I select a good movie he’ll hang this over my head. “Well Mr. L, seems you’ve redeemed yourself a little from last time, n’est-ce pas?” Fucker.)

Next week: Crazy stupid love