Friends With Benefits is a romantic comedy that aspires humorously to transcend the conventions of its genre and ends up embodying them at the same time. By calling out the cliches on its own territory, the film shrewdly proves that certain ingredients must be present in order for a romantic comedy to even exist. Yet if other ingredients include a cheerful director, super-charismatic leads, and killer jokes rooted in peculiar human truths, you can have a wonderfully enjoyable time observing such a recipe.
The film stars Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis as Dylan and Jamie, two busy professionals living in New York City who strike up a quick friendship. Both have been jilted by relationships in the past and have grown weary towards the concept of romance. Since both of them are highly attractive individuals who wish to avoid commitment, they strike up a deal: they will have sex every time their hormones demand it without the inconvenience of emotions or promises. So the pair conducts their friendship as they normally would, only now with outbursts of hot and outlandish sex.
Their arrangements seems to be serving both their needs quite nicely, that is until romantic feelings start bubbling towards the surface. The more time they spend together (especially after Jamie meets Dylan’s family) the more they suspect that they’d make a perfect couple. Can the two overlook their jaded views on love to have a healthy relationship? Can their professional and personal lives allow it? Can they just get over themselves and live happily ever after?
Its realized very early in the opening scenes that Friends With Benefits strives for the rat-tat-tat playfulness of classical Hollywood romances (the poster for It Happened One Night doesn’t make an appearance for nothing). The early scenes are so rapidly paced and frantically edited that you wonder if trouble lies ahead for the narrative. You wonder if the film should be allowing more reality-based humanity into the forefront the way Cameron Crowe does. But thankfully, director Will Gluck gets a grip on his tone like a guitarist clamping down on a wild riff. It is then we are able to delight in the old school charms of the whip-smart dialogue and electric chemistry between the sharp leads.
While the film doesn’t achieve the profound insights and bruising truths of (500) Days of Summer, the most superior of recent romantic comedies, it doesn’t stray very far from the shores of modern behavior and does prove to be smarter than the average Hollywood product. For a film based on no-strings-attached sex, the film actually gets a lot right when it comes to rolling around in the sack. Anyone who’s ever hit the sheets will be able to recognize the peculiar quirks and odd detours here that can awkwardly and hilariously occur in sexual activities. It also helps matters that this movie contains one of the funniest oral sex scenes I’ve ever seen.
Whats really a blessing is how the film doesn’t rely on phony contrivances to truck in conflict but finds its complications within the interior of the character’s psychologies. The story accurately observes that when most people are faced with romantic satisfaction, they habitually allow their inadequacies and paranoia to ruin everything. I’m not sure how I feel about a subplot involving Dylan’s Father (Richard Jenkins) who has a condition more serious and grim than a film such as this is prepared to deal with. Still, it adds a genuine, real-world weight to Dylan and Jamie’s dilemma.
Of course a film like this wouldn’t work quite as well without lead actors who are both attractive and hilarious, two traits that don’t exactly walk hand-in-hand with every performer nowadays (whens the last time Katherine Heigl made you chuckle?). Timberlake and Kunis are pitch-perfect in the forefront, making you feel like they’ve been smoking this genre for years. They exude goofiness, sexiness, likeability, and yearning so seamlessly and effortlessly that they seem immune to any contrivance this genre could possibly throw at them.
It helps that Timberlake and Kunis get hilarious assistance from a supporting cast of wonderful comic actors. Instead of employing unknowns in thankless roles, Gluck employs the old-school studio tactic of surrounding the background with masterful comic actors. The beautiful Emma Stone and the silly Andy Samberg make short but effective impressions as jilted exes. Woody Harrelson excels in a role I’ve been waiting years to see: a gay sidekick with more masculinity than most of today’s leading men. In perhaps the film’s funniest moment, Jason Segel and Rashida Jones take a hatchet to rom-com sappiness in an awesomely silly way. And it must be said that even though Richard Jenkin’s character is too serious for this material, he does what the plot requires of him with great tact.
Friends With Benefits is another infectious touchdown for Will Gluck after the enormously enjoyable Easy A. From his filmmaking endeavors so far, it appears Gluck likes to tackle messy and taxing aspects of human experience by shining positive insights on them within the craftsmanship of a studio comedy. His movies don’t quite resemble the real world, but rather those heightened, sunny worlds often found within the Hollywood artifice. Nonetheless, Gluck displays that classical sense of using the artifice to scratch at human truths while neatly sidestepping the discomforts they could come with. The result is a shrewd message on how to deal with life’s stresses, basked in an earned positivity that’s hard to resist.
Friends With Benefits isn’t exactly a deconstructive masterpiece or mind-blowingly original, but it slides a hip freshness into tired cliches and rarely takes a false step. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun watching a lightweight romantic comedy. I can’t decide if its sneaky or miraculous the way Gluck makes us cheerfully relish age-old Hollywood conventions, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t really like it.
