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Rashid Irani's review: Friends With Benefits
Two attractive individuals enter into a physical relationship but find trouble when they start to develop feelings for each other. Sounds familiar?
Yet another rom-corn
Friends With Benefits
Direction: Will Gluck
Actors: Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis
Rating:* 1/2
Two attractive individuals enter into a physical relationship but find trouble when they start to develop feelings for each other.
Sounds familiar? That’s because the plot of this sappy romantic comedy is similar to that of No Strings Attached, released earlier this year. Goodbye Natalie Portman-Ashton Kutcher; hello there Mila Kunis-Justin Timberlake.
She (Kunis) is a Manhattan-based headhunter. And he’s (Timberlake) an up-and-coming art director from Los Angeles who lands a job at a glossy fashion magazine on the east coast.
Recently dumped by their partners, they meet at the airport. Attempting, in vain, to revive the charm of vintage Hollywood rib-ticklers, director Gluck (Easy A) serves up a mawkish melodrama with a few raunchy situations thrown in. A palpable sense of déjà vu sets in long before the ‘friends’ sashay towards an all’s-well-that-concludes- well resolution.
On a more positive note, some of the banter between the commitment-phobic pair is fitfully amusing. In supporting roles, Patricia Clark (the sexually liberated mom), Woody Harrelson (a flamboyantly gay sports editor) and Richard Jenkins (the Alzheimer’s-afflicted dad) are in fine fettle. Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake are lusterless, though.
