Friends With Benefits

Lordy, did I hate this movie. It was being developed at the same time as No Strings Attached, and shares the plot of a pair of attractive people who decide to try having a casual sexual relationship without the accompanying romance. Neither one matches the episode of Seinfeld, which covered the same topic much better in 22 minutes. But this film is aggressively bad.

Justin Timberlake is a hot-shot web designer living in L.A. Mila Kunis is a headhunter who recruits him for the art director job at GQ, which is in New York. He is reluctant, but after breaking up with Emma Stone (we know she's awful, because she likes John Mayer), he decides to go for it. Kunis has just broken up with Andy Samberg, and she wants the fairy-tale version of romance (she loves Pretty Woman).

The two become friends, and after Timberlake gets a good view of her ass he proposes they have a sex-only relationship. Then the predictable story arc happens. Anyone can see where it's going, so it's pointless to recap it. To make it worse, the characters discuss romantic film tropes while at the same time exploiting them. It's as if the writers are saying, "We hate modern romantic comedies, too, but we're going to make one anyway."

Timberlake and Kunis, who can be very appealing performers, are wasted here. Kunis, in particular, plays a very grating character. Neither of them struck me as authentic people, the same with the supporting cast, including Jenna Elfman as Timberlake's sister, Patricia Clarkson as Kunis' free-love mother, and in a low blow, the fine Richard Jenkins as Timberlake's father, suffering from Alzheimer's.

The film is directed by Will Gluck, and I won't embarrass the writers further by naming them. The script is not funny in the least, and thinks that New York/Los Angeles jokes are still funny (Timberlake waits for the traffic light! Guffaw!) The characters are all rich and live in that fantasy world of the upper-middle class. The only interesting part of the script is the character of Woody Harrelson, who plays the sports editor of GQ as a very masculine gay man. It flips a cliche, but it doesn't help the film much.

The only reason I stuck this film to the end is the frequent scenes of Kunis in a state of undress. She doesn't show it all, but she comes damn close. Otherwise, this movie sucked.