Our straight guy columnist reviews Friends With Benefits
by Jon Morales
Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake in Friends With Benefits
I’m not a huge fan of rom-coms. The predictable plot arcs, the stock characters and the happy endings are a bit boring. The only way for a rom-com to win me over is through the charm of the main characters. Friends with Benefits manages to pull that off, being charming, genuinely funny in a predictable way, self-aware of its tropes and then unabashedly plunging right into them anyway complete with the rom-com standard ‘misunderstanding’ and reconciliation ending.
The two stars, Mila Kunis especially, are so likeable and look to be genuinely having a good time, so I ended up getting drawn into the movie and appreciating it. The plot doesn’t offer any great surprises and seems to have a couple of weird continuity jumps like the neck-cracking scene in LA, but this is light fare, easy on the eyes, and enjoyable if you want something breezy to take a date to.
There’s also the strange idea that two young, fairly well-off, fairly fashionable people from New York and LA have never been to the other city, which is a little difficult to believe.
Woody Harrelson makes a great extended cameo as a non-stereotypical gay foil character. Although the gay character is still dispensing sage and timely advice to his straight friend, at least his straight friend is not the girl for once. They even manage to work in an allusion to White Men Can’t Jump, working in an even more unbelievable than the first time dunk by Woody in a pickup hoops game.
Take a friend, hope for some benefits afterwards, straight guys…not a chore to sit through.
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