Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis are a couple of hotties – what...a big Duh! statement – and in Will Gluck’s new comedy (a sex-com rather than a rom-com), Friends with Benefits, the pair simply scorches the screen with their, humor, good looks, and chemistry.
The movie shares a plot with last winter’s No Strings Attached, which, for the record, I actually liked.
That Ivan Reitman-directed offering, starring the equally attractive Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman as friends who kept things simple by taking care of each other’s...needs without letting feelings get in the way (how modern!), was just fine, but, since we gotta compare ’em, Friends with Benefits is slightly better.
That’s because it dares to be more than just another comedy.
Gluck’s follow-up to last fall’s Easy A tries and, for the most part, succeeds at breaking the mold of the genre by taking everything it requires and winking at it knowingly. He doesn’t strive to debunk clichés but rather, to acknowledge their existence and make them his own.
As producer and co-writer, the young director has created a world in which we can not only buy that Timberlake and Kunis could get dumped – by silly, silly people played in a smart casting move by Gluck’s Golden Globe-nominated Easy A leading lady Emma Stone and Timberlake’s stellar partner in SNL crime Andy Samberg – but would have to resort to find arranged comfort in no one else but each other. Like they couldn’t get with anyone they wanted as soon as they hit the street.
It’s preposterous, but you pick up what he’s putting down because Timberlake and Kunis sell it and make it real. She’s a driven New York headhunter who has recruited him for a dream job at GQ; he’s new in the city, having just left his life in L.A. And they’ve totally hit it off, as friends, because, but, yeah, they don’t like each other like that.
Which is good. Sure, they’re attractive, but they’re buddies, y’ know.
When they both get to talking about how they have an itch they can’t quite scratch for themselves, though, and how post-break-up they don’t want to start up anything, they decide to go there, knowing full well that that’s all it’s gon’ be (they swear it on a Bible iPad app!).
It would’ve been easy for Friends with Benefits to have only one of them fall for the other and have everything shoot to s--- from there, but the movie allows for a most authentic, oft-unexplored option, and it lets both characters – Dylan and Jamie, btw – developed into real people who are deeper than they otherwise might be in a different world.
That’s a testament to the script, and to the talent and commitment both actors bring to the table.
Kunis is a delight, and Timberlake is at his strongest yet (I dare say this is his true breakthrough). Together, they are super-fun, to look at (cute butts, you guys!) and to spend time with, so the real benefit of this one is to see them go in one way and come out another: wiser and, maybe...just maybe, in love.
My Rating ***1/2
Photo: Sony Pictures.
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