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Smart rom-com
By Jake Coyle |
August 7, 2011, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THOUGH self-consciously set in the bicoastal Hollywood axis of New York-Los Angeles, "Friends with Benefits" more properly takes place amid the movie world of romantic comedies.
It aims to ditch schmaltz and replace it with snap, the kind found in the classic rom-coms of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn or Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night," a poster of which hangs above a busy bed in "Friends with Benefits."
The more modern, saccharine conventions are mocked. Justin Timberlake, playing a magazine art director, parodies the manipulative music of tidy romances. Mila Kunis, as a New York corporate headhunter, goes so far as to, when passing a street poster of "The Ugly Truth," curse Katherine Heigl.
(Kate Hudson, Drew Barrymore and Matthew McConaughey can breathe sighs of relief; they are spared specific denunciation. But they know what they have done.)
"Friends with Benefits" follows "No Strings Attached" (with Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher) as this year's second comedy about friends who confidently decide to weed out emotion from sex, only to find that such calculation is impossible even for today's tech-savvy multitaskers.
This film, directed and co-written by Will Gluck ("Easy A"), is easily superior to its forerunner, but nevertheless disappoints by eventually falling prey to the very cliches it strives to upend.
"Friends with Benefits" opens in fine style, with dueling breakups (Emma Stone and Andy Samberg guest as the exes). Dylan (Timberlake) and Jamie (Kunis) then meet when Dylan travels from Los Angeles to New York for a job interview arranged by Jamie.
Jamie sells Dylan on transplanting to New York, and the two quickly work up a friendship and great, rapid-fire banter. Each having soured on relationships, they opt for a purely sexual affair. As every audience member knows, their journey from cynicism to genuine romance follows.
It is, of course, an old plot and one tried out in movies and sitcoms, but Gluck expends a great deal of energy in imbuing the comedy with smarts and emotional realism. Much of the film unfolds more organically than the wide majority of romantic comedies.
This is the third film for Gluck, a TV veteran. With "Friends with Benefits" and "Easy A," his style has come into clear relief. His hyper, R-rated dialogue runs at nearly a "His Girl Friday" pace and is stuffed with postmodern pop culture references. Here, a mother-daughter trip is compared to "a Nora Ephron movie," and "Harry Potter" fandom is equated with homosexuality. Snowboarder Shaun White, in a misstep, makes a cameo, and John Mayer is jokingly referred to as "the Sheryl Crow of our generation."
Gluck is clearly whip smart and he likes his films that way. This all to the good, but much of "Friends with Benefits" comes off as too showy in its cleverness. Punch lines (some of which land very well) are too happy with themselves.
The funniest satire of romantic comedies comes in a movie within the movie: a mock Hollywood, cliche-ridden film called "I Love You, I Love New York," with Jason Segel and Rashida Jones.
With soaring music, Segel delivers a line for which we can only guess at the sappy metaphor: "Looks like New York is all out of blueberries."
If only "Friends with Benefits" had given in as completely to mockery as "I Love You, I Love New York."
It aims to ditch schmaltz and replace it with snap, the kind found in the classic rom-coms of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn or Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night," a poster of which hangs above a busy bed in "Friends with Benefits."
The more modern, saccharine conventions are mocked. Justin Timberlake, playing a magazine art director, parodies the manipulative music of tidy romances. Mila Kunis, as a New York corporate headhunter, goes so far as to, when passing a street poster of "The Ugly Truth," curse Katherine Heigl.
(Kate Hudson, Drew Barrymore and Matthew McConaughey can breathe sighs of relief; they are spared specific denunciation. But they know what they have done.)
"Friends with Benefits" follows "No Strings Attached" (with Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher) as this year's second comedy about friends who confidently decide to weed out emotion from sex, only to find that such calculation is impossible even for today's tech-savvy multitaskers.
This film, directed and co-written by Will Gluck ("Easy A"), is easily superior to its forerunner, but nevertheless disappoints by eventually falling prey to the very cliches it strives to upend.
"Friends with Benefits" opens in fine style, with dueling breakups (Emma Stone and Andy Samberg guest as the exes). Dylan (Timberlake) and Jamie (Kunis) then meet when Dylan travels from Los Angeles to New York for a job interview arranged by Jamie.
Jamie sells Dylan on transplanting to New York, and the two quickly work up a friendship and great, rapid-fire banter. Each having soured on relationships, they opt for a purely sexual affair. As every audience member knows, their journey from cynicism to genuine romance follows.
It is, of course, an old plot and one tried out in movies and sitcoms, but Gluck expends a great deal of energy in imbuing the comedy with smarts and emotional realism. Much of the film unfolds more organically than the wide majority of romantic comedies.
This is the third film for Gluck, a TV veteran. With "Friends with Benefits" and "Easy A," his style has come into clear relief. His hyper, R-rated dialogue runs at nearly a "His Girl Friday" pace and is stuffed with postmodern pop culture references. Here, a mother-daughter trip is compared to "a Nora Ephron movie," and "Harry Potter" fandom is equated with homosexuality. Snowboarder Shaun White, in a misstep, makes a cameo, and John Mayer is jokingly referred to as "the Sheryl Crow of our generation."
Gluck is clearly whip smart and he likes his films that way. This all to the good, but much of "Friends with Benefits" comes off as too showy in its cleverness. Punch lines (some of which land very well) are too happy with themselves.
The funniest satire of romantic comedies comes in a movie within the movie: a mock Hollywood, cliche-ridden film called "I Love You, I Love New York," with Jason Segel and Rashida Jones.
With soaring music, Segel delivers a line for which we can only guess at the sappy metaphor: "Looks like New York is all out of blueberries."
If only "Friends with Benefits" had given in as completely to mockery as "I Love You, I Love New York."
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