Review: ‘Friends With Benefits’
Like the social phenomenon it documents, "Friends With Benefits" wants to have it both ways. But as opposed to attachment-free sexual pairings, which are entered into so that the couple can enjoy the fun of relationships without the emotional demands, director Will Gluck's film wants to be a romantic comedy but not, y'know, one of those lame Hollywood romantic comedies. It also wants to be poignant and touching but not at the expense of being shocking and hip. All in all, "Friends With Benefits" is loads better than this year's other friends-with-benefits comedy, "No Strings Attached," but that doesn't mean it doesn't get tripped up by some of the same problems.
As a sign of the movie's irreverent attitude, "Friends With Benefits" stars Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, young stars known for their cool quotient. Timberlake plays Dylan, an L.A. blog editor lured to New York by GQ in the form of headhunter Jamie (Kunis). Dylan takes the job and moves across the country, and the two become friends. Both recently out of relationships, they decide that since they both miss having sex but don't want to be anyone's boyfriend or girlfriend they'll screw around with each other, pledging not to form any serious attachment to one another in the process. (For a movie in which the characters talk so much about "Seinfeld" in the opening reel, it's amazing that Dylan and Jamie never mention that classic episode from the sitcom where Jerry and Elaine try the same arrangement.)
There's no point in mentioning that complications eventually arise from Dylan and Jamie's agreement since that's what the audience is secretly hoping for. And that's part of the problem with both "Friends With Benefits" and "No Strings Attached": While the movies' hook is the unconventional, exciting sexual relationship at their center, deep down inside these are movies that are peddling the same ol' romantic fantasy about true love and that perfect soul mate that Hollywood has specialized in for about a century. Sure, Gluck handles it in a much smarter way than Ivan Reitman did in "Strings," but there's still that eventual concession that, yeah, these types of hookups are fun but, really, you need to grow up eventually.
The film's transformation from glib to heartfelt is most felt in Timberlake and Kunis, who handle the movie's tonal shift fairly well. But while they have a decent amount of onscreen chemistry, they're playing characters who talk the way that movie people think cool urban hipsters talk. This means they're infected with a certain blase hipness that does abate some as the movie rolls along, but it ends up making it somewhat hard to really root for them. Movies about shallow, immature people looking for love can be done quite well -- "Manhattan" and "Shampoo" spring immediately to mind -- but in the place of the zeitgeist-grabbing impulses of those movies, "Friends With Benefits" tries to seem cutting-edge by referencing websites, flash mobs, and openly gay characters, all of which seem somewhat forced attempts at coolness.
But despite its fundamental problems, "Friends With Benefits" is a hard movie to dismiss. That's largely due to a jolt the film gets when Dylan and Jamie fly to L.A. to visit Dylan's family, even though they're still not a couple. From that point on, the movie shifts gears, becoming a far more thoughtful and affecting story and allowing us to see some of the secret baggage that Dylan's been caring around with him. (As Dylan's father, Richard Jenkins hijacks the film in the best way possible, giving it an emotional center that it badly needs.) The sequence is probably the film's best bit of subversion: It takes a trip to Los Angeles, the default capital of shallow self-absorption, for "Friends With Benefit" to become a more substantial and layered story.
Gluck's last film was "Easy A," a charming, tart riff on the high school comedy, and he applies the same technique here when it comes to romantic comedies. Unfortunately, that mostly means scenes in which character either watch romantic comedies or talk about movies, all the while making fun of their conventions. (To cover all its bases, the movie also contains a scene in which, apropos of nothing, the 1969 free-love comedy "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" plays on a TV that no one's watching. I guess Gluck wanted to make sure he didn't alienate the cineaste audience.) "Friends With Benefits" wants to call attention to the fact that it's not going to be some dopey romantic comedy but, honestly, it is in its own way. Parental figures still give advice, teary speeches are still delivered, and hearts still get broken. And when the movie is at its most conventional near the end it tries to wiggle out of it by essentially mocking the convention. But that's simply being disingenuous: Even at the conclusion, "Friends With Benefits" congratulates itself for putting a new coat of paint on what's still a pretty rickety old vehicle.
Grade: C+
