Friends With Benefits Review

Friends with Benefits is afflicted by the same problem suffered by films such as Armageddonand Deep Impact, Megamind and Despicable Me,Dante’s Peak and Volcano or A Bug’s Life andAntz (any other suggestions?). It has been released mere weeks after a similar film with the same ideas, in this instance the Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher film, No Strings Attached. In preparation for this review, I watched that film. This may have been something of a mistake as I’m now struggling to differentiate the two in my mind (to add to the confusion, it turns out that No Strings Attached was originally also called Friends with Benefits in its first draft). Needless to say then, despite the minor superiority of Friends with Benefits, if you’ve seen No Strings Attached, you probably won’t enjoy the sensation of déjà vu you’ll get when seeing this new feature.

Justin Timberlake plays Dylan, whose head is hunted by headhunter Jamie (Kunis) to come and work for GQ in New York. After he accepts and moves over from the West Coast, the two develop a strong friendship and, after some poor previous relationships, arrange to have casual sex with each other. All seems to be going well until circumstances get complicated. As the excellent Peter Bradshaw said of No Strings Attached, “you don’t need a PhD in romcomology from the University of Predictable Nonsense, formerly Predictable Nonsense Polytechnic, to guess what happens next.”

This is a shame really, as the film could have been so much better. The fact that No Strings with Benefits even ridicules predictable rom-coms (via an excellent spoof film the couple watch featuring a cameo from Jason Segel) makes it all the more annoying that the couple do in fact get together in the end (oh come on, is that really a spoiler?). You could either say the film doesn’t have the strength of its own convictions or that it’s trying to have its cake and eat it, but either way it’s frustrating. There’s even a scene, about twenty to fifteen minutes before the end, that, had the film finished there would actually have been quite poignant and affecting, but alas, there are a few more twists and turns to before the inevitable saccharine conclusion.

The reason this is so very annoying, rather than just inciting indifference is because Friends with Strings is actually quite a funny and entertaining film. It has more bite and snark than the Portman-Kutcher vehicle (though there’s nothing in it quite so brilliantly distasteful as the ‘period mix’ CD in that film) and Timberlake and Kunis are fairly convincing and likable. You get the impression that they could almost be a real couple, rather than simply rich, beautiful people repeating words they memorised off bits of paper (‘actors’ in the common parlance, I believe). Woody Harrelson also manages to steal a few scenes with as Timberlake’s brusque gay colleague. The film also goes somewhat serious – and not in a bad way – when we meet Timberlake’s dad, who is suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Richard Jenkins gives a strong performance and the condition is tastefully handled with heart.

All told then, if you go in without expecting Friends with No Strings Attached to their Benefitsto break the rom-com mould (despite its threat that it might), you should enjoy it for the zippy comedy that it is. If you caught Portman and Kutcher knocking boots earlier in the year though, you may want to skip a repeat episode.