All movies need a good central conflict. Without one, why should the audience care? Case in point: Friends With Benefits, a very funny movie that is delusional in thinking it has a true conflict.
Mila Kunis plays Jamie, a New York headhunter who is contracted by GQ to sell Los Angeles-based Web designer Dylan (Justin Timberlake) on a lucrative job. Though Dylan and Jamie’s career paths are more an excuse for the two to hook up than avenues toward character development, Dylan takes the job at GQ and moves to the big apple, where he and Jamie become friends without benefits at first. One night, on the couch watching a terrifically horrid and clichéd romantic chick flick, the couple ponders why sex must come with such complication? Jamie compares sex to tennis; Dylan thinks it’d be a great idea to volley for serve.
We’ve all seen awkward movie sex be funny, but Friends With Benefits somehow makes good sex funny as well. When you have leads that are as good looking as Kunis and Timberlake, you want them to have some sexual chemistry. The good news is the pair goes well together, even if they have a few awkward moments that are laugh-out-loud funny. The bad news is that Dylan and Jamie are so obviously perfect for each other that their non-coupling isn’t believable. Both claim to be “emotionally unavailable” as an excuse for why they can only be together in bed and not in a real relationship. That’s pretty weak sauce as far as conflicts go, and as we wait for the beautiful people come to their senses, I found that I didn’t root for them so much as I patiently waited.
Still, the movie maintains a nice linear path and is consistently funny for the first hour, mixing in solid performances from Patricia Clarkson, as Jamie’s promiscuous mother, and Woody Harrelson, as Dylan’s over-the-top homosexual co-worker. (And by over-the-top, I don’t mean that Harrelson plays the “flamboyant gay guy.”) There are also a few priceless cameos in the movies that I dare not spoil because they are so well placed.
But that linear path I just mentioned turns into something more like a bell-curve when Friends With Benefits tries to throw way too many character arcs at us all at once. After a few too many montages dedicated to establishing Dylan and Jamie’s friendship, Dylan takes his lady friend home to stay with his family for July 4th. There, Dylan’s family reveals some issues that feel unnecessary — or at the very least come way too late in the film. (But at least they work as an excuse to get the always-invaluable Richard Jenkins some screen time.) With far too much emotion back-loaded in the movie, it’s as if Director Will Gluck and his writing buddies are trying to put one over on the viewer with a storyline that morphs into exactly what it set out not to be.
So yes, Friends With Benefits pleased me at times — but it never impressed me. In a year that’s already been plentiful with quality comedies, Friends With Benefits is funny but forgettable. If only they could have stayed pals instead of letting all that emotion run amok …
This article appears in Jul 21-27, 2011.