Big Screen Peter: Friends With Benefits

review by Peter Lewis

“Friends With Benefits” is a new romantic comedy starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. It’s directed by Will Gluck, fresh off the success of his left-field comic smash, “Easy A.”

The premise of the film is, much like most Hollywood fantasies, devoid of all reality.

Timberlake plays Dylan, a hotshot art director for a hyper-popular news and entertainment blog in Los Angeles. He’s recruited to New York by a headhunter (Kunis) to interview for the position of art director at GQ magazine. Though initially reticent, he ends up taking the job. Alone in New York, the pair become fast friends and, as the title insinuates, they ultimately take it to the next level. You see they just want to take this and add that.

Seinfeld references aside, the script formula is obviously a bit played. It’s typical Hollywood fantasy. Plenty of bluster and emotional cues, but never any lasting moments of worth.

The most honest and affecting scene in the whole movie doesn’t even involve our protagonists. It’s Dylan’s father. Coping with the devastation of Alzheimer, he floats in and out of reality. At dinner toward the middle of the movie, he lashes out. Blind with angry confusion, he falls to the ground and bristles when his family tries to help him. It’s a sad, sobering scene that’s neutered before the weight can even be absorbed. The director immediately cuts to our pair of would be lovers hiking to the top of Hollywood hill. Bitter reality swept under the rug once more.

That scene is indicative of the entire movie.

While Kunis and Timberlake are both exceedingly fit for their roles, they are never the main attraction. Apart from the cutely clever opening scene, the best moments come from their supporting cast. Woody Harrelson is dynamite as Tommy, the brashly gay sports editor of GQ, while the uncredited cameos by Rashida Jones and Jason Segel are more honest in their satire than much of the movie itself.

To counteract the obvious triteness inherent in the plot, most of “Friends With Benefits” is spent pointing out the obvious cliches that riddle Hollywood romantic comedies. And that insightful honesty is as pointed as it is amusing. It’s a ruse. A distraction. It’s like throwing your voice or doubling back to elude a posse: it’s effective only if it’s believable.

Not content to solely rely on that “look over there” technique, the filmmakers packed the script with punchy, fast-paced dialogue. The hope, one would presume, is to further distance itself from the tritely packaged products shoved down our throats on a weekly basis.

There are moments where this rope-a-dope strategy works. Scenes from the faux-movie that is interspersed throughout “Friends With Benefits” is genuinely funny. And likewise, there are moments where the pithy dialogue is reminiscent of older rom-com classics.

Beyond that? It’s just the same old bullshit with a brand new bow.

• Friends With Benefits is playing at the Carmike 14 and the Malco Cinema 12 in Fort Smith, and the Malco Van Buren Cinema. Link here for time and ticket info.

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