Review: Friends with Benefits

Friends with Benefits

Dir. Will Gluck

Year: 2011

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 109mins

In 2010 director Will Gluck made the hilarious teen comedy Easy A, Mila Kunis broke out with psycho-thriller Black Swan, and Justin Timberlake showed real acting skill in The Social Network. Half a year later all three converge on Friends with Benefits, the second film this year (after No Strings Attached) to tell the story of friends who embark on a sexual relationship, only to discover it leads to emotional complications. Unfortunately this mingling of talented people has not produced anything of any worth. The idea of “friends with benefits” is hardly rocket science, yet Gluck and his three co-writers seem intent on being as dim-witted as possible.



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You know what? I could've talked about what was wrong about this terrible movie for a few hundred more words. The whole enterprise is just completely misguided and disingenuous. I mightn't have liked the film if it were nothing more than Kunis and Timberlake meeting cute and spending the next 100 minutes falling in and out of love and then back in again. Instead, the filmmakers went out of their way to mock the stereotypical nature of rom-coms before adhering to every single one of them. And it doesn't even stick to its (to use an American term) "red band" sensibilities. There's nothing particularly funny about hearing someone say curse words in the place of regular language. The lack of actual jokes would've been damaging beyond repair, but the rest of the movie is just as bad.



There got to a point where I was actually spotting all the bloopers and consistency issues the film had. A scene where the bed sheets shift positions between edits? A close-up of Timberlake appearing on the TV news as he's being rescued from the Hollywood Sign? Did they rig a camera to him? Or how about the scene where she says she didn't have time to shave her legs and he says he did have time to shave his legs and yet a close-up of their legs shows hers are shaved and his are not? And while they're not bloopers, I could not stop noticing the ridiculous toga parties these characters obviously thought they were attending whilst in bed. Take a look at this shot for instance:





And, okay, I'll give them leeway on the issue once or twice, but the entire movie is full of them. She routinely pulls the sheets up to her neck during the sex scenes and does anyone every actually do that? Or how about the magic mystery sheet that somehow found its way in the path of some rather important bodily movements that would've made sex impossible. It's like the improbably pool sex scene where Elizabeth Berkley thrusts against Kyle McLachlan's biceps for a new generation. The whole thing was just remarkably foolish. At least Bad Teacher, which I was in the minority of appreciating, had a go-for-broke lead performance from Cameron Diaz and, for a film that featured a plot about breast implants, actually showed breasts. Something's incredibly curious about Mila Kunis if she's willing to sign onto a film like this and yet wants to protect her modesty. Maybe she actually believes that scene where she tries to convince Timberlake's secretary that she's "perfect for Photoshop" and that she's a dog ugly heifer? Hmmm. And really? A man who runs a blog of six million monthly hits and DOESN'T know what a flash mob is? D- but bordering on F because it really is such a fail in so many areas.



You know what else I find amusing? When websites such as Yahoo make such glaringly obvious mistakes as this...





I don't seem to recall Mila Kunis ever being nominated for the Academy Award.

Review: Bad Teacher

Bad Teacher
Dir. Jake Kasdan
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: M15+ (ridiculous)
Running Time: 92mins

She’s a Bad Teacher, shootin’ grades in your direction. The latest in a string of raunchy, adult-marketed comedies (following Bridesmaids, with Horrible Bosses coming soon) is a rather obvious affair – watch as Cameron Diaz acts filthy and inappropriate around young children! – and yet succeeds due to the sheer determination of its towering lead performance. Not willing to lazily waltz their way through Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg’s ho-hum one-note screenplay, Diaz and her supporting cast routinely spin gold out of innocuous moments with blunt force dialogue delivery and physical determination.

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I liked it. I'd almost say I prefer it to Bridesmaids purely because it's 40 munutes shorter. Hmmm. Anyway, who doesn't like a Vanity 6 reference?

Australians Do It Dirtier

Take a look at these two posters for upcoming friends-with-benefits comedy, er, Friends with Benefits. One is the American poster and the other is the Australian poster. It's quite obvious which is which, isn't it?


I continue to find America's relationship with sex so bizarre. Movies with titles like Friends with Benefits or Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which are obviously about sex, aren't allowed to advertise that fact on their poster and yet movies like Saw are allowed to feature dismembered, sawed off limbs? Hmm. Sure, Zack and Miri's use of a visual gag (oh har dee har har) about oral sex was perhaps a bit too risque, but the American poster for Friends with Benefits on the left is so puritanical. It's not like adults aren't going to know what the deal is with a film called Friends with Benefits - and those who are offended by that title would probably be offended by anything - which means somebody cried "won't somebody think of the children!" and they had to send out this poster instead. It's going to be awkward to parents and their children no matter they ask about: "what does benefits mean?" or "why is he pointing at her like that?" if they ask anything at all, so I guess I don't quite see the problem.

On a completely separate issue, it's annoying that Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis were obviously photographed separately and grafted together with errant limbs attached to each of them. And you can tell they're the same photo of each by simply looking at them, and yet the rest of their bodies are doing entirely different poses. You're trying to sell these two as a sexy pair who find each other sexy so that you want to see them have sex (isn't that the whole point of this movie?) and yet in both posters they look as steamy as a cold dinner.

These two, as evidenced by the trailer (below), are in a lot of scenes together. Surely they could've taken a few photographs for a movie poster in between takes, right? Perhaps I'm just deluding myself into imagining scenarios in which famous movie couples somehow stumble across a poster that is as iconic and memorable as this improvised poster for Desperately Seeking Susan featuring Madonna and Rosanna Arquette (click the link if you don't remember what I'm talking about). So many missed opportunities there. Although, at least they didn't attempt it and still bollocks it up like No Strings Attached (NATALIE PORTMAN'S MAGIC DISAPPEARING WASTE!!!AAAGGH!!)

*sigh*