Spicy friendship

Friends With Benefits (2011)
Certified: 16
Duration: 109 minutes
Directed by: Will Gluck
Starring: Mila Kunis, Justin Timberlake, Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson, Andy Samberg, Patricia Clarkson, Bryan Greenberg, Richard Jenkins
KRS release

Hollywood likes to do things in doubles and Friends With Benefits is a case in point. This film shares the same theme as No Strings Attached which was released earlier this year and is also quite similar to last year’s Love and Other Drugs. Well, Hollywood has served the best for last as Friends With Benefits is a much more accomplished film and results in being a delightful breezy romantic comedy.

Dylan (Justin Timberlake) has just started working as art director at GQ magazine where he meets Jamie (Mila Kunis). Both are fresh from troubled relationships with their exes (Emma Stone and Andy Samberg), having just put them through the wringer. Jamie has up till now known only her mother Lorna (Patricia Clarkson) with her father’s identity being kept a secret, while Dylan’s parents are divorced. Dylan and Jamie decide to remain friends but also start having sex promising each other that love will not enter into the equation. This is contested by Dylan’s friend, Tommy (Woody Harrelson), GQ’s gay sports editor. Complications arise when Jamie starts dating an unsavoury but glamorous doctor called Parker (Bryan Greenberg).

When Jamie accompanies Dylan to see his dying father (Richard Jenkins), things do not remain the same and the two have to face a lot of emotions and issues.

Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis are quite a sizzling on-screen couple, each outdoing the other in the various stakes that the film’s premise sets. Mr Timberlake’s recent performances in Bad Teacher and The Social Network have seen his acting stock rise and here he is quite a funny and sympathetic screen presence.

Mila Kunis shows that she is also human, besides being lovely, and, like Nathalie Portman, follows her dark role in Black Swan with a wonderful turnout. She even out-performs Ms Portman’s turnout in No Strings Attached as she shows she has an easier time doing comedy, making it all look like being very run of the mill. The film benefits a lot from the supporting cast, especially in Patricia Clarkson’s delightful performance and also in Woody Harrelson’s great turnout, with the latter being quite a hoot in his every screen moment in this picture.

The characters played by Richard Jenkins and Jenna Elfman (as the older sister) are there to provide heart and soul to the picture and for the most part succeed. The flash mob scenes are syrupy sweet but definitely on the crowd-pleasing side.

Friends With Benefits makes the best use of its premise, its appealing on-screen couple, and the rules of the romantic genre. The film does this by consciously referencing other romantic comedies, being a slapstick about romantic comedies – not a spoof but an earnest film which then surprises us with its sense of style, raunchiness and adequate sentimentality. The film wears its influences proudly and emerges to be this generation’s version of the classic When Harry Met Sally.

As directed by Will Gluck who has just directed the entertaining Easy A, the film is fun and entertaining in a relaxed manner. Thus we get a romantic comedy about romantic comedies that looks much more real than what we usually expect from the genre.