Friends with Benefits is well worth seeing

August 5, 2011   

4

Granted, I am partial to the genre, especially smart rom coms like As Good as it Gets, Something’s Gotta Give, Serendipity, Easy A and How to lose a guy in 10 days. While it does not soar to the heights of those movies, Friends with Benefits is a worthy addition to the pantheon.

The first two thirds of the movie are fantastic as Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis poke fun at the clichés of traditional rom coms with very sharp and quick witty dialogue. Unfortunately, the movie ends up falling prey to those very clichés, but it’s still very enjoyable and cute.

Next on the list: Midnight in Paris and Crazy, Stupid, Love.

  • I did like Friends with Benefits, but I thought that No Strings Attached (similar theme with Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher) was much better, and you should check it out if you haven’t already. Mila Kunis is smoking hot and did a great job with her character, and I agree about the dialogue. But I thought the secondary characters were boring, the last third was contrived (as you pointed out), and I kept expecting the big plot twist to be that JT was gay in the end. Meanwhile, though I usually hate both Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher separately, I thought they had amazing chemistry together! The dialogue is great, them falling for each other is put together in a much more believable way, the secondary characters are better, and each of the main characters has a secondary love interest potential who is much more suitable which keeps you wondering if they really will end up together.

    Midnight in Paris was good, Crazy Stupid Love was great. The latter should have been made into two movies – each of the couples had a separate interesting storyline and great chemistry that made me want it to be two longer movies so we could spend more time with each couple.

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