It's like No Strings Attached, but it's much better.

Rating: 7/10 (22 July 2011)

A couple days ago, I was lucky enough to attend an early screening of the new romantic comedy, Friends With Benefits.
In the film, Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis play Dylan and Jamie. Dylan is a businessman in LA recruited to work for GQ magazine in New York, and Jamie is a co-worker who shows him the ropes or New York. They're both just getting out of shaky relationships, and have become fed up with the concept of true love. While mocking the typical rom-com clichés of a movie they watch one night. They decide to make a plan to add sex to their friendship, with the intention that it doesn't lead to complications. But, as cliché would have it, adding sex to friendship does lead to complications between Dylan and Jamie.
The movie has kind of the same idea as No Strings Attached, a movie released earlier in the year, and even though we did not need two of these movies, I will say Friends With Benefits is a better movie. It's not great, it's just that I found No Strings Attached to be so dull, Friends With Benefits just gets more things right.
The screenplay is pretty straightforward, but I liked how it would poke fun at the clichés of romantic comedies, and then would use those for its comedic advantage later on. The movie is predictable, and it goes on a little longer than it needs to, but that was something I could overlook, because the film had me laughing the whole way through.
At the very least, the cast is right. Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis are hilarious in the movie, and they share great, and sometimes steamy chemistry. They both have a bit to be desired, but their charm, especially that of Kunis, makes that forgivable. There are also some laugh out loud supporting roles by Patricia Clarkson and Woody Harrelson, and a brief, but awesome cameo by Emma Stone in the film's first few minutes.
But the movie does still tend to shake in tone, and every so often, there's a rare joke that doesn't work.
Friends With Benefits is ALMOST a good movie, but it'll sadly have to settle at **1/2 out of ****, subject to change upon possible rewatch.