“No relationship, no emotions, only sex” is the promise that Jamie (Mila Kunis) makes best-friend Dylan (Justin Timberlake) swear to, hand placed dutifully on the Bible App of her iPad. The premise of Friends with Benefits is self-explanatory, the twist being that it's not (just) the man, it's the girl as well who wants a sex-based relationship with ‘no strings attached'.
Which, ouch, was the title of an earlier movie this year based on the same idea — that wound up being crass, rude and unfunny despite a couple of likeable leads (Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher). Luckily, Friends with Benefits ' director Will Gluck knows how to combine comedy in sex with romance in humour; the result is a frothy contemporary update of “the romantic comedy”.
New York corporate headhunter Jamie lures hotshot LA-based art director Dylan to the Big Apple, for a dream job at GQ. The two good-looking leads have instant camaraderie chemistry when they meet; when Dylan moves to New York, they continue to hang out as best friends and share past histories of failed romantic relationships. Somewhere along the way, they decide that if sex is a physical act like playing tennis, there's no reason they can't “play tennis together” and still be friends.
Their sex talk — somewhat censored for local audiences — is like a funny instruction manual, a sort of Idiot's Guide to Sex. Very raunchy yes, but in bad taste, no. For this, you have to thank the stars, not the heavenly ones that Jamie takes Dylan to see on a New York rooftop, but Timberlake and Kunis themselves.
Kunis is smart, edgy and flashy, a scene-stealer; Timberlake is more restrained but equally effective, and his impromptu homage to 1990s rap duo Kriss Kross is one of the funniest sequences in the film. The casting all round is intelligent — Patricia Clarkson as Jamie's sex-addicted mum, Richard Jenkins as Dylan's father who is aware that he is sinking into Alzheimer's, Woody Harrelson as Dylan's aggressively gay colleague.
All the characters talk, a lot. Friends is a talkie movie — our leads chatter when they are meeting up, making out, breaking up, making up. The scriptwriting team — Gluck co-writing with Keith Merryman and David A. Newman — has produced a nicely blended vintage of words to put into the actors' mouths, which they swill around and spit out with verve and relish.
The verbal exchanges ricochet with such zing, you do wish that the unthinkingly frenzied editing and camera work could have slowed down a little. Another act of cinematic laziness is that the film resorts to “commitment issues” and “emotional unavailability” as the factors keeping our leading pair apart; it's hard to think of Kunis or Timberlake as emotionally damaged folk.
While the movie delights in self-aware digs at romantic comedies, it does, eventually, surrender to the very tropes it's been laughing at — with grace and wit. We know where the movie is headed, but are completely complicit in its journey — chuckling along the way and smiling goofily at the end.
Friends with Benefits
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Director: Will Gluck
Cast: Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis, Woody Harrelson, Richard Jenkins
Storyline: Dylan and Jamie try out the formula: friendship + sex - emotional attachment/love = healthy relationship.
Bottomline: A rom-com that's both funny and sexy — unbelievable but true.
