Today's Review: Friends With Benefits

Hey, didn't we have a fuck buddy movie already recently? Yes, this movie has the same basic premise as No Strings Attached, but thankfully that movie was so forgettable that this Friends With Benefits felt all nice and new again.

This one starts Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis as young attractive people Dylan and Jamie, who apparently find it hard to hold onto partners. After Jamie headhunts Dylan for a job at GQ magazine, they form a friendship, before deciding to just have sex with each other with no complications. That's something that bugs me about these romantic comedies. Everyone's always in a really good job. Why could Mila Kunis star as a McDonald's employee or something? Oh well, it is what it is.

In a twist that no one in the world saw coming, like ever, things get a bit complicated between the two, posing the question, "can anyone just be friends with benefits?", because calling the movie "Fuck Buddies" wouldn't be a great marketing move.

As much as I slated No Strings Attached up there, I remember it not being so bad, I think it was even quite funny in places. Friends With Benefits beats it in that sense though. The dialogue is sharper, the one liners are great at times, and some of the situations were quite damn funny. There is definitely some great chemistry going on between Timberlake and Kunis, which you could probably expect from two people who have to spend hours of shooting pressing their naked bodies against each other. There's also a great storyline going on between Dylan and his dad, which fits into the movie quite nicely and lends a bit of fresh air to the proceedings.

While I did enjoy the movie as the events unfolded, at the end of it all this is a romantic comedy, and a romantic comedy isn't a romantic comedy with some kind of sad decline towards the end. For just a second I thought it might avoid cheesy cliches, but it certainly disappointed me in that regard. Still, as a romantic comedy, it's certainly one of the better ones I've watched recently.

My rating: 4/5