Review: Friends with Benefits

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Friends With Benefits

On Wednesday night, I missed a Captain America screening to instead enjoy this year's best date movie, at least since No Strings Attached (my review). Actually, Friends with Benefits is much better than the Ashton Kutcher/Natalie Portman rom-com, with a funnier script and more believable chemistry between stars Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. Riding a similar plot vehicle, Timberlake and Kunis catapult lines of dialogue each other in the comfortable banter of best friends, a stride into which Kutcher/Portman could never quite settle.

Jamie (Kunis) is a recruiter/headhunter who attempts to woo hotshot graphic artist Dylan (Timberlake) from his LA blog to a position at GQ. After a whirlwind tour of non-touristy NYC culminating in a Times Square flash mob, he agrees to take the job. With Jamie as Dylan's only New York friend, and an immediate chemistry, they begin to spend all their free time together. While drunkenly relating accounts of their most recent exes, they decide to experiment with having sex while keeping it in a box, free of emotional demands and attachments. The result is some of the most hilarious-yet-steamy sex scenes ever caught on film.

Patricia Clarkson and Richard Jenkins as Jamie and Dylan's parents provide guidance and advice, as naturally the arrangement does result in emotional entanglements. Clarkson is always a delight, and her character Lorna is a bohemian free spirit few other actresses could play well. She delivers my favorite line of the movie, "Baby, you need to adjust your fairy tale." Jenkins' Mr Harper struggles with declining mental health and pines for a lost love. Both of these characters feel as though there is an unfinished story arc that would have connected them, perhaps left on the cutting room floor.

But of course, the focus of Friends with Benefits is entirely on Dylan and Jamie, with a few other characters present mostly to give each someone to talk to when they're not together. Besides the parents, Jenna Elfman is a perky older sister to Dylan who, like a mother, shows off his most embarrassing baby pictures. Woody Harrelson plays an openly gay sports editor, Tommy, who redefines the gay stereotype.

Instead of a flaming flamboyant nancy, Tommy is a sports-loving basketball playing jock with the same predatory, sexual-harrassing atittude toward guys that many guys display toward girls. Constantly wisecracking about his sexual orientation and questioning that of every man he encounters, Tommy elicits numerous laughs from the audience while being an unapologetically uncomfortable example of reverse-misogyny.

As smart as the script is and fantastic the acting, Friends with Benefits suffers from a poor job of editing with cuts that often leave the viewer disoriented. I believe we had some projection problems as well that caused the picture to jump around a few times, not that these are a big concern for this kind of film. Friends with Benefits has got it where it counts, and viewers will surely leave with smiles on their faces after a movie that almost recaptures the chemistry of When Harry Met Sally.