Watch Friends With Benefits Movies 2011 Movies Full Video - Both Timberlake and Kunis have recently broken up with their partner. Kunis plays a recruiter for GQ magazine, and Timberlake is someone she "stalked" to head up their Art department. Timberlake's ex-gf is Emma Stone. What is interesting is that Kunis' character is the laid back type of person we would expect Emma Stone to play, while Stone (what little we see of her) plays an emotional character we would expect Kunis to play. I don't know if the producers did this by design, or they just lucked into it, but knowing this made the movie funny on a different level. Kunis is savvy enough to realize she has been ruined by romantic movies as she awaits her Prince to sweep her off her feet. You know at the end of the movie, come running to her as she is about to leave, and pour his heart out to her.
Kunis gives Timberlake a fast paced tour of NY, perhaps one of the best sells for Manhattan I have seen in a long time. The movie verbally condemns Hollywood's romantic comedies while ironically creating one identical to it. With some quick character build up, the film goes to a scene where Timberlake and Kunis decide that they will have sex without the emotional baggage while swearing on a Bible app. No complications, just sex. Guess how that turns out?
Woody Harrelson plays a gay sports editor who is not shy about being gay. Woody gives Timberlake love advice, "It's not who you want to spend Friday night with, but who you want to spend all day Saturday with."
The sex scenes between Kunis and Timberlake are more comical than romantic. Timberlake likes to keep his socks on and sneezes after an orgasm, and Kunis is a screamer. Patricia Clarkson plays Kunis' super hip mother, who has never really told her daughter who her father was. In her first few minutes he was Greek, Puerto Rican, or Russian...she is sure he was Eurasian.
For me, the track record of the 2011 comedy releases did not seem great, so I was a bit nervous about watching this movie. That being said, I was completely wrong and surprised by this film. Starring Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis, and Woody Harrelson, "Friends With Benefits" is, well, exactly about what it sounds. Timberlake, upon moving to New York to take a new job, has as his only friend Kunis, who lured him to New York for the job to begin with. As the two develop as friends, so does their relationship develop. While the ending may be predictable, the storyline of the friendship, a character with Alzheimer's, and the "realness" of the film lend reality to comedy.
"Friends with Benefits" has a lightning fast, very smart script, it moves like a limousine, and it features another stunningly moving character turn by Richard Jenkins. It's good enough that it revives hope for that troubled genre, the Romantic Comedy. It's worth seeing, more than once.
"Friends with Benefits" surprised me. I don't understand why Justin Timberlake is famous - what is remarkable about him, really? - and Mila Kunis does nothing for me. We live in the age of decline of the Romantic Comedy. "Friends with Benefits" was not the forgettable, rote, mass-produced studio product I expected. It was actually really good.
"Friends with Benefits" began really fast, and I found myself bobbing along on the script's energy. I noticed how much I was enjoying it and I kept waiting for the film to drop the ball, to let me down, to betray itself, to fall into predictable clichéd traps. That didn't happen for quite a while, and the film's failings were slow in coming, minor, and didn't ruin the film.
What "Friends with Benefits" does right it does very, very right. The script is amazing. There are jokes that you'd need some literacy and maturity to understand. They fly right by, no pause for the viewer to laugh, or to google the references, before the next one-liner or trenchant observation rolls down the chute. Our culture has been so dumbed down that hearing a joke that one would have to have some knowledge of history or culture or even just the front page of the newspaper to understand amazed and gratified me.
The movie's strong point is that it is so fast; that's also a bit of a weak point. Legendary director Frank Capra said that "sometimes your story has to stop and you just let your audience look at your people. You want your audience to like them...these scenes are quite important to a film. When the audience rests and they look at the people, they begin to smile." "Friends with Benefits" is so frenetic, it never creates a memorable screen moment where Dylan (Justin Timberlake) and Jamie (Mila Kunis) do nothing but look movie-star lovely and get under our skin.
Richard Jenkins works some powerful mojo. He's a character actor, older, bland-looking and bald, but in every movie I've seen him in lately, especially so in "Eat Pray Love," he seems to be visiting from a different, better movie, and I want, after the movie I'm watching is over, to watch the superior film from which Jenkins has visited. In "Friends with Benefits" Jenkins plays Dylan's father who is suffering the early stages of Alzheimer's. He is funny, profound, arresting and truly lovable. What is Jenkins doing? Whatever it is, more actors should do it.
Jenna Elfman, Patricia Clarkson, Woody Harrelson, Nolan Gould and Masi Oka are all very, very good in supporting roles. Clarkson, as Jamie's mother, delivers a liner about Jamie's father that made me laugh out loud.
On the surface, "Friends with Benefits" looks like too many other, lesser movies. It's not. It's a really good, worthwhile film.
