I am not one for rom-coms all that often. Like musicals, they aren’t generally my genre of choice. There are a couple I have enjoyed (the Emma Stone-starring Easy A worked very well for me), but by and large, a good rom-com has to do something a wee bit different and pull it off well to keep my attention. Why then would I opt to watch the 2011 sex-and-romance comedy Friends with Benefits?
Well, my podcast partner Jen did some extra work in it. I didn’t spot her as I watched the movie, but that was a good enough reason for me.
Headhunter and New York girl Jamie (Mila Kunis) brings LA online art director Dylan (Justin Timberlake) to GQ for a job, and the two start to hang out. Both of them had some recent break-ups, and they get along very well. After laughing at a rather generic rom-com starring the uncredited Jason Segel and Rashida Jones, the two get to wondering if it is possible for two people to have sex and still be nothing more than friends. Having nothing better to do, they opt to go for it.
This is a romantic comedy. We know that love will come, probably with some contrivances to force a break-up somewhere late in Act 2. And that all does happen, so what can this movie do to set itself a bit apart from the rest? For starters, Timberlake and Kunis are actually a charming pair. The sex scenes are a nice mix where the two either chat about their day as friends or just tell each other what they like in the bedroom in ways that, the movie suggests, wouldn’t happen if they were a couple. Yeah, the final contrivances are rather lame and rote, but the leads actually have decent chemistry that makes much of the movie work.
It also helps that the supporting cast is rather impressive. Beyond the aforementioned Segel and Jonas, there’s Woody Harrelson as Timberlake’s gay co-worker, Jenna Elfman as Timberlake’s sister, the reliable Richard Jenkins as Timberlake’s Alzheimer’s-inflicted father, a delightfully daffy turn from Patricia Clarkson as Kunis’s mother (the only character in the movie who doesn’t question the “friends having sex” thing), and Andy Samberg and Emma Stone appear briefly in the beginning of the movie as the significant others that break it off with Timberlake and Kunis in a rather cleverly-done opening that makes it look like Timberlake and Kunis are meeting for a date only for the two to meet different people.
But, in the end, it’s still a basic rom-com with a quirky pair having a silly misunderstanding that they overcome after one of them gets advice from a wise older person, there’s some crazy moment to bring the pair together, and they live happily ever after. Just because Friends with Benefits hangs a lampshade on the cliche, that doesn’t make it any less of a cliche. This was a largely charming movie, I don’t regret seeing it, but it hasn’t changed my mind much about rom-coms.
Grade: B-
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