Newsletter
-
Recent
Cloud
3d academy awards action actors actress adaptation book adaptation Brad Pitt Cameron Diaz child stars Christmas classic Comedy cult classics documentary drama DVD family Friends with benefits Harry Potter holiday Hollywood actresses horror Jennifer Aniston Julianne Moore justin timberlake Liam Neeson Matt Damon movie star movie trivia Octavia Spencer oscars remake romance romantic comedies romantic comedy romcom Ryan Gosling Seasonal sequel summer movies The Artist The Help The Notebook thrillerAd
Tag Archives: Friends with benefits
Who’s Who: Casual Relationship Movies Of The Past Year
Do these highly similar films leave you confused? Here’s a way to break them down.
LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS (2010)
Actors: Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway
Protagonists: Jamie Randall and Maggie Murdock
Relationship: Pharmaceutical Rep and Parkinson’s sufferer.
Who desires the casual relationship: Maggie
Her reason: Her degenerative condition
Who wants it to be something more: Jamie
Why he goes along with it: He’s a womanizer used to being intimate without commitment.
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Why the storyline as a works: It’s the woman who wants the casual relationship, not the man, like we’re used to seeing.
NO STRINGS ATTACHED (2011)
Actors: Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman
Protagonists: Adam Franklin and Dr. Emma K. Kurtsman
Relationship: Friends who keep running into each other
Who desires the casual relationship: Emma
Her reason: She’s a busy medical student who doesn’t believe in love.
Who wants it to be something more: Adam
Why he goes along with it: His girlfriend left him for his father.
Location: Los Angeles, California
Why the storyline works: It’s the woman who wants the casual relationship, not the man.
FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS (2011)
Actors: Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis
Protagonists: Dylan Harper and Jamie Rellis
Relationship: Head hunter and client
Who desires the casual relationship: Both
Their reason: A serious relationship will complicate their work relationship.
Who wants it to be something more: Both, at differing times.
Why they go along with it: They both have been burned too many times in the past.
Location: New York, New York
Why the storyline works: Both want the casual relationship and both eventually want more.
Photo © Deklofenak – Fotolia.com
New On DVD: Friends With Benefits
Friends with Benefits (2011) was lucky—or unlucky—enough to be produced around the same time as two other romantic comedies involving friends with benefits. While Love and Other Drugs (2010) and No Strings Attached (2011) premiered first, Friends with Benefits should not be overlooked and is perhaps the most realistic story of the three.
Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake are relative newcomers to leading roles, unlike the protagonists in the other two movies. In Friends with Benefits, no one is dying from an incurable disease and there is no hot female med student who rejects all romantic gestures in a cold-blooded fashion. Jamie Rellis (Kunis) and Dylan Harper (Timberlake) are both working professionals who have been burned too many times that they don’t want to be burned again. They like each other in equal amounts but the timing is always off. They do everything they can to avoid living a life like a romantic movie, only to succumb to the inevitable plotline at the end, thus making fun of the genre as they are creating it, which makes for a smart script.
Produced by Will Gluck, this movie includes Jenna Elfman and Richard Jenkins as Dylan’s sister and father, Patricia Clarkson and Bryan Greenberg as Jamie’s mother and periodic love interest, and Woody Harrelson as the story’s slapstick character who, in this movie, is a flamboyant gay man. Kunis and Timberlake have obvious chemistry, but they also both possess a girl- and boy next door quality that makes their characters entirely relatable. And while the crux of the storyline isn’t that hard to predict, it makes for an entertaining ride.
Photo © Gabor Takacs – Fotolia.com
Friends With Benefits
New romcom Friends with Benefits centers on two young professionals, Jamie and Dylan, who are both too busy to find a partner. The solution? A purely physical, ‘no strings attached’ relationship! Of course, things are bound to get messy …
The heroine is a young female New York-based headhunter who persuades a prospective new hire to take a job in the Big Apple. The attraction between the two of them is obvious. But when both realize the other person is everything they’ve been striving to avoid in a relationship, they decide to keep emotion out of their liaison.
Mila Kunis (who was so brilliant in Black Swan) and Justin Timberlake play the couple. This is the first time Timberlake has taken a leading role, making the film one of the most eagerly anticipated of the summer. (The trailer’s YouTube release attracted more than a million views in two days, making it YouTube’s second most watched video of that day and the most viewed video in the category of “film” worldwide.)
The picture is directed by Will Gluck, with Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and Patricia Clarkson among the supporting cast. It hit US theaters on July 22.
Gluck rewrote the original script for Kunis and Timberlake, and has compared the story to a classic Hepburn andTracyproduction. But he has said: “The two characters are in the generation where they have grown up on romcoms. They comment on them throughout the movie, realizing that they’re in a romantic comedy story, and embracing the fact that they’re going through a romantic comedy moment, as two regular people who aren’t in a movie would do.”
Early reviews described some aspects of this movie as rather formulaic and predictable. It also received criticism for being released too soon after No Strings Attached, with Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, which had a very similar premise. Nevertheless, critics and audience members alike have agreed that this film features fun, intelligent writing, and that Timberlike and Kunis shine and sizzle with palpable chemistry.
You, of course, will have to decide for yourself!
Photo © Alice – Fotolia.com
Tagged Friends with benefits, fun, funny, justin timberlake, mila kunis, romantic comedy, romcom, sexy