Friends with Benefits
Dir: Will Gluck
Rating: 2.7/5.0
Screen Gems
109 Minutes
When making a movie, casting makes all the difference. If the cast is enjoyable enough to watch, I can forgive a hell of a lot about even a bad film. Friends with Benefits has one of the better casts in a mainstream comedy in a while, one that makes the movie really transcend its pitfalls.
For one thing, the first half hour or so of Friends with Benefits feels engineered to keep the attention of someone with zero attention span. The cuts are incredibly quick and the succession of pop music threatens to drown out all of our characters as they embark on the formative moments of their relationship. I don’t know if director Will Gluck, who directed the surprisingly great Easy A had any say in this, but the first part of the film feels like it was re-cut to get to the sex as quickly as possible – a move that shows a lack of faith in the film’s own characters.
Soon, however, the style subsides and the movie gets to happen. And it’s not a terrible one: recently dumped New York headhunter Jamie (Mila Kunis) recruits recently dumped Los Angeles web designer Dylan (Justin Timberlake) to work for GQ, enticing him with the obvious romance of NYC (read: rooftops and flash mobs). To make matters better, they’ve got instant chemistry, so they become besties. Tired of being dumped constantly, the two decide to have a physical relationship.
Even more so than in Easy A, the characters in Friends with Benefits talk about movie clichés and what a film would do versus “real life.” Which is confusing, I know. Let me put it this way: watching the film-within-a-film starring Jason Segel and Rashida Jones, Jamie and Dylan point out the fallacies of the thing – that Grand Central Station scene was clearly shot in LA, the film ends on a vaguely upbeat song that doesn’t represent the film at all, etc. While it’s an easy way to connect with the audience (surely we’ve all had conversations like that), it’s also an attempt for the film to excuse itself when it climaxes at Grand Central Station and ends on the same upbeat pop song.
When it isn’t being drowned out by its own soundtrack or chopped up by some horrendous editing, the script by Gluck with Keith Merryman and David A. Newman is decent – there are some choice lines and not a small amount of pathos, but the film’s greatest achievement is in making its sex scenes surprisingly funny. You go into the film wanting to watch Kunis and Timberlake fuck (it’s kind of in the premise), so when they get around to it, it better be worth it. The scenes never quite top the great hilarious sex scene of 2011 (Kristen Wiig + Jon Hamm), but they’re enjoyable.
But like I said, the cast really shines here. As someone who was in middle school when N’Sync was hitting it big, I’m surprised that Justin Timberlake has become such a wonderfully charismatic comedic actor, and Mila Kunis gets a chance to use her aggressive pretty girl schtick to great advantage as a constantly moving New York professional. Then there’s the supporting cast: Woody Harrelson as a gay GQ sports writer, Richard Jenkins as the aforementioned dad and Patricia Clarkson, who threatens to steal the show as Kunis’ free-spirit mom.
It’s the secondary cast that makes Friends with Benefits really worthwhile, making it really easy to forgive any romance film clichés that make the film’s oh-so-clever rejection of other clichés kind of hypocritical. Friends with Benefits is like going to a fast food restaurant with your best friends: the food sucks, but you’re having too good a time to care.
