Play on the romcom clichés

Rating: Null/10 (20 September 2011)

The romcom genre is by nature a formulaic affair. Girl meets boy, chemistry, do they don't they, yes they do. Friends with Benefits tries to play on the formula in a self aware style. The film and its characters both know the disappointments of chasing the fairytale of true love. The couple initiate a friendship that the co-stars Timberlake and Kunis do with humour and a good turn of chemistry. To avoid the hardships of chasing love the story has them turn against love, thus creating the premise of the anti-romcom. This is of course a red herring. The couple fall in love despite themselves and it is an enjoyable journey to follow them.
The story exposes the characters flaws that inherently cause one person to connect deeper to another. The emotion that the couple attempt to remove from the relationship in favour of just sex, wins the day. Where the film does well is turning the conventions just a notch to show something reasonably fresh in a very clichéd genre. The film even mockingly plays on these clichés through a film within a film which Kunis as the die-hard romcom fan finds herself aspiring to in her own love life.
Friends with Benefits paints an amusing yarn of finding love where the characters actively chose to deny it. Gluck keeps it raunchy (see poster for example of possibly most suggestive gesture to find itself on a London bus), self aware and when needed shows the baggage the characters carry without it being over sentimental. The message seems to be that love, if you can find it with the right person, is the ultimate friends with benefits.