Running Time: 2 hours
Rating: R
Director: Will Gluck
Quick Impressions:
The movie was great, though I find myself wondering why we had to sit through five fairly intense horror previews before watching it. I’ve wanted to see this movie since I first heard about it back in January in an article comparing Friends with Benefits to No Strings Attached (which to me looked dumb, but in fairness I haven’t seen it). To me, the premise of Friends with Benefits didn’t matter. Will Gluck was directing it, and I loved Easy A so much that I was eager to see anything directed by him. Plus, I’ve always liked Mila Kunis, and I’ve developed an appreciation for Justin Timberlake after his many Saturday Night Live performances and his arresting supporting turn as Sean Parker in The Social Network.
Friends with Benefits was the last movie of summer that I actually had high expectations for, and it didn’t disappoint me. Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis make charismatic, highly watchable leads, and the actors playing the secondary characters turn in some magnificent performances. As a comedy, Friends with Benefits delivers with a brisk pace, consistently funny dialogue, some zany situations, and well developed (in many ways) likeable leads who have enough chemistry to make the love story believable. But its well-played dramatic moments really make the movie great. More than just entertaining fluff, Friends with Benefits tells a story that has real heart.
The Good and The Great:
Friends with Benefits manages to be consistently funny without being crude or disgusting despite a plot that (as the title suggests) involves two frustrated and like-minded people who attempt to have a sexual relationship without being in love and without ruining their friendship. The movie makes lots of jokes about sex, but they make you smile more often than they make you cringe. The “benefits” amuse primarily because of their realistically awkward logistics. But at the heart of this racy comedy lies a very amusing drama about two friends. In such a situation, we expect to see a rather cliché ending about falling in love with your best friend, but the clichéd concept doesn’t limit the movie.
Not only is Friends with Benefits funny (always important in a comedy), but the two friends in question are complex, well-developed, and endearingly flawed individuals still trying to figure out their own lives and identities but yearning for the physical comforts of the type of relationship they don’t feel quite ready for emotionally. At the beginning of the film, Jamie’s ex-boyfriend tells her that she’s emotionally damaged, and she is. During the film we come to see why. Dylan’s ex-girlfriend says that he’s emotionally unavailable, and though we don’t understand the depth of the accusation at first, as the movie progresses, suddenly these issues make sense. These exes are deliberately made comically unappealing. But even Jamie and Dylan recognize that their criticisms (however much they might rail against them) are uncomfortably accurate.
Best Joke:
One of the things that makes the movie so funny is its repeated use of running jokes like Dylan’s struggles with math or his secret love of Harry Potter. The movie is replete with this kind of call-back humor, and the best of these jokes is surely Jamie’s mother’s increasingly muddled recollections of her father. At first, these remarks are just funny. Then before long they begin to seem a bit distressing, sad once you stop laughing. But they actually culminate in the poignant revelation that Jamie is the love of her mother’s life, a bittersweet moment well-played by both actresses.
Best Scene:
I thought the movie became something more than a summer diversion when Justin Timberlake’s Dylan decides to have a steak with his father in the airport. Several significant threads tie together at the moment when Dylan follows advice Jamie gave him and finds a way to show his father that he still respects him as much as he did before he developed Alzheimer’s. In the airport, we see how Dylan and his father think alike. We also see that Jamie has genuine insight about Dylan’s difficulties. Her advice to him works because the two of them have a deep bond and understand each other, even if they don’t always understand themselves. (Oh, and we also see that in spite of his difficulties, Dylan’s father still knows best when it comes to helping his son.)
The Performances:
This movie has a great script full of complex, colorful characters who in a lazier film could easily become offensive jokes. The promiscuous, unstable mother, the gay friend, the father not in full possession of his faculties—all of these fascinating individuals successfully deliver jokes without ever stooping to becoming human punch lines. And the supporting cast members turn in some amazing performances.
Patricia Clarkson is perfect as Jamie’s highly imperfect mother. Lorna has some of the funniest lines in the movie, all expertly delivered, but Clarkson pulls off something far more difficult, managing to be amusing and disturbing at the same time. We can easily see why Jamie, though repeatedly disappointed and hurt, can never close her heart or her home to her charming-if-a-bit-too-whimsical mother.
Woody Harrelson is also pretty great as Tommy the sports editor who, after recovering from the disappointing knowledge that Dylan isn’t interested in any “benefits” turns into an amusing and often very helpful friend. My husband seemed to laugh at every one of his lines which he delivered with irrepressible panache.
Richard Jenkins gives one of the best performances of the movie as Dylan’s father in early stages of Alzheimer’s. He manages to be funny, touching, sad, and courageous in a very real, nuanced performance.
Shaun White is also hilarious as both the exceedingly polite and puzzlingly enraged versions of himself.
Jenna Elfman is very good and believable as Dylan’s sister, giving a performance far more subtle than she is in some of her more famous past roles.
And Nolan Gould from Modern Family brightens the screen as the young magician whose tricks often seem to be performing him.
As I said before, Timberlake and Kunis are highly watchable and each gives a very good performance. I don’t think I’ve seen Justin Timberlake exhibit such a range of emotions in a movie before; he handles the more dramatic moments of the story just as well as the comedy. And Kunis manages to be just as engaging and almost as funny when in distress, perfectly playing a character who uses humor as a defense mechanism.
The Negatives:
If you go into this movie expecting a movie similar in tone to Easy A, and you liked Easy A, then you will like Friends with Benefits. The real limitation of the movie is that it has a completely predictable plot with a predictable outcome. Watching Friends with Benefits wondering, Are Jamie and Dylan going to realize they’re in love with each other, is like watching Romeo and Juliet and asking, Do you think they’ll both kill themselves this time? As far as I’m concerned, the barebones plot device doesn’t really matter. What makes the movie good is the interesting and well-developed characters and how they grow by interacting with one another.
The major flaw I can see with this movie is that it’s an R-rated comedy called Friends with Benefits, so people going may expect a shock comedy or raunch fest, when it’s really a quiet, surprisingly moving little story about people in some heart-wrenching situations who have very good (if a bit off-kilter) senses of humor. If you don’t know what you’re getting going in, you may go out not liking what you got.
Overall:
I thought Friends with Benefits was great, just as good (and actually a bit better in terms of pacing) than Easy A. It won’t blow you away with its original plot. It won’t make you laugh out loud and wince in horror over and over again. But it will make you smile and laugh out loud occasionally. It might even make you cry. If you like movies like the one I’ve described in this review, then go see Friends with Benefits. I loved it.