Friends With Benefits - trashy, dumb, and vulgar

February 21, 2025

Rating: 2/5

The 2011 movie Friends With Benefits starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis was released shortly after No Strings Attached. Both movies explore a friendly relationship based on platonic fornication. A type of relationship often called friends with benefits.

In Friends With Benefits, directed by Will Gluck, the relationship grows out of a professional relationship between Kunis's headhunter Jamie Rellis and Timberlake's up-and-coming graphic arts whatever (director? It's some crayon stuff) Dylan. Jamie convinces L.A.-based Dylan to accept an offer to join GQ in New York City. Once that is secured they conclude that it could be beneficial for the two of them to solve their respective lack of fornication by becoming friends with benefits.

The upshot is that they develop romantic feelings for each other but are loathe to admit it which leads to a slow burn of simmering frustrations.

This could have been a good movie but it drowns in the circa-2010 aesthetics of Bravo, MTV, Sex and the City, and Internet-cringe flashmobs. Since Timberlake is in the movie he has to sing and dance a little (did Dave Bautista clothesline anyone in Parachute? No, he did not).

The movie to some extent rights the ship as it gets deeper into the plot but not to the point where it becomes worthwhile - unless you're a huge fan of Mila Kunis, which I apparently almost am.

In a red-carpet interview the writers of the movie - David A. Newman and Keith Merryman - positioned it as Jewish romcom. They may have been completely baked when they said it. Either way, make what you want of that.

As a late entry in the romcom era it compares to the dismal The Girl Next Door from 2004, another attempt to push romcoms in a more vulgar direction.

Gluck took more conventional romcom fare to the market with the reportedly handsomely profitable 2023 movie Anyone But You.