Friends with Benefits

Rom-coms are a funny thing, and by that I mean funny-peculiar, not funny-ha-ha. And by funny-peculiar I mean awful. Just awful. They’re never romantic (unless your idea of romance is a needy buffoon up a famous landmark) and rarely comedic. Depressingly, they’re also hugely popular and profitable, so Hollywood keeps farting out these vast pink clouds of saccharine bum-gas to stink up our multiplexes and living-rooms.

I’m not a fan.

Imagine, then, my delight at finding that I had to spend ninety minutes of my life with something called Friends with Benefits. It’s got him from the Mickey Mouse Club and her from Family Guy in it. They want to have sex but they don’t want to fall in love. Jesus. OK, let’s get this over with…

And then something strange happened. There’s Timberlake. Mmm, he’s handsome. There’s Kunis. My, she is handsome. He’s jumping into a nice car. She’s talking on a ‘phone. They’re… Oh… Hang on… I didn’t expect… Ah!

Then something else happened which was - get this - actually funny. And it wasn’t the only time. In fact, the film spent a good deal of its time being actually funny. Properly, laugh-out-loud funny. And clever. And charming.

You see, FWB attempts a rather clever trick; it is, at its core, a pure rom-com, but it grabs every opportunity to poke fun at the genre it represents. It satirises the clichés, subverts the rules and toys with our expectations. It plays to the gallery for laughs with a knowing wink. It even ridicules itself.

Now, all this is a nice idea, but does it work? Well, yes, almost completely. It’s not perfect, but its minor flaws are easily overlooked in light of the delightful surprises offered up. Timberlake and Kunis are fantastic and provide a great on-screen couple that we actually care about.  There are some inspired supporting performances, too. Patricia Clarkson is great as Kunis’s fly-by-night (literally) bohemian Mother, and the wonderful Richard Jenkins is predictably excellent as Timberlake’s Alzheimers suffering Father. Woody Harrelson even pops up as an aggressively homosexual sports-writer, dementedly upending the gay-best-friend cliché.

All this, and the fact that the film provides honest-to-God belly-laughs, stops it from folding in on itself and being neither rom-com nor satire. Friends with Benefits manages to have its cake and eat it, but do Timberlake and Kunis? I think you’ll enjoy finding out.

Jay Freeman