REVIEW | Friends with Benefits (2011)

Friends with Benefits defines the modern romantic era: the shameless, acceptable lifestyle of today's dating scene.

Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis are two young professionals who met post-heartbreak, clicked, and decided to just be friends—and enjoy a sport together: sex with each other. No strings attached. No emotional investment. Just pure, unadulterated sex. And, of course, their friendship gets predictably complicated.

There's definitely something unique about this "post-modern" romantic comedy. No, it's not the story. What's surprisingly new here is that it's taken the term "quick-paced" into a whole new meaning. It is breakneck-speedy. Literally. The shots and scenes edited and cut with crazy speed that the movie feels like a two-hour trailer. Never seen anything like it before. Before you can appreciate one scene or one shot, it's already skipped to another.

Directed by Will Gluck who brought us the hilarious Easy A, the movie Friends with Benefits prides itself for being smart-alecky and witty and unorthodox and cool, even casting Patricia Clarkson as Mila Kunis' "cool" mom as if to further reiterate the movie's "coolness"— and bringing back some good stuff from Easy A— even adding a cameo of Emma Stone to thrill the fans. However, it only came off as a sad corny cling-to-the-past style.

But Friends with Benefits lacks that unique intelligent wit and delicious substance that Easy A has satisfied us so richly. It's got too many romping scenes (of course!) but they are somehow used to make up for its lack of a great screenplay . The characters have presence, yes. Mila Kunis is entertaining to watch (her wafer-thin Black Swan body still intact), her bright personality filling the screen. Timberlake, who I honestly find incredibly unattractive, constantly reminds everyone that he's a musical individual and from time to time would belt out lines in his high-pitched unattractive voice, which makes my skin crawl. Woody Harrelson as a GQ sports editor incites a good chuckle, though.

Aside from that, there's nothing in the movie that sticks. It's self-conscious. And it will take you, wide-eyed, in a whirlwind ride towards the end: the scenes are too fast, the characters talk too fast, the music too fast, like the movie is in a terrible hurry to bring you to its end—as if fearful that you might notice what it lacks: a very good story.

1.5 out of 5 stars