Clueless commitmentphobes transformed in old fashioned morality tale masquerading as urban comedy

Rating: 3/10 (31 August 2012)

Jamie is an executive recruiter who recruits Dylan, a young, up and coming art director for a small internet company in Los Angeles, to come to NYC and work for the much more high powered GQ Magazine. Before this happens, there's a prologue showing their back story: both are going through another unsuccessful relationship with a member of the opposite sex. When Jamie and Dylan meet each other for the first time, they're both jaded, as they've been burned one too many times, in their quest for 'true romance'.
While getting to know each other, they watch a parody of a romcom (romantic comedy) on TV, both bemoaning the pitfalls of traditional courtships and wondering perhaps how they can circumvent all the complications associated with traditional romance. They forge an unlikely friendship where they can avoid any kind of commitment in the relationship and simply enjoy sex for its own sake. Hence, the 'benefits' is the satisfaction of having the sexual relationship without the commitment.
Soon, the film's scenarists strategy of setting us up for an old fashioned morality tale, becomes clear. The 'friends with benefits' program--that is, sex without commitment, is only part and parcel of a larger overall problem with the personalities of our protagonists. Jamie and Dylan are unfortunately narcissistic, coarse and immature.
The film's scenarists would like us to laugh at Jamie and Dylan, as they expose their foibles in the first thirty minutes or so. Jamie, the perennial go-getter, obnoxiously puts down Dylan, who extols the virtues of wide-open, west coast living as opposed to what he regards as the cramped living style of New Yorkers (the put-down becomes clear when Jamie sarcastically cracks, "What are you, a Gazelle?).
If Jamie's coarseness is off-putting, it pales in comparison to Dylan's complete cluelessness. Dylan is so narcissistic that he simply can't understand why he's so wrong about Captain Sully. People rightly perceive that he's stubborn and ignorant when he claims 'planes fly themselves'. In reality, Captain Sully's plane was almost completely disabled due to the bird strike and could not possibly fly itself. So he's wrong on that count and 'tunes out' all those who are justifiably angry with him.
Dylan's myopic 'Sully stance' is indicative of what's wrong with the first third of the film. By trying to 'humanize' the characters, exposing them as deeply flawed human beings, the film's scenarists have gone too far and made them out to be decidedly unlikeable. Somehow the Sully joke needed to be lighter and not cast Dylan in such a negative light. That way, we would care more about him at the end, when he finally does redeem himself. The same goes for Jamie whose constant use of expletives coupled with her overreaching competitiveness, also casts her in a negative light, during the expository sequences.
The failed comedy of exposing the two 'losers' who adopt the self-defeating 'friends with benefits' program becomes a much more traditional romance in Act II and III, not unlike the 'film within a film' parody of the romcom the two lovers watch and disparage early on. It doesn't take long for Jamie to have true feelings for Dylan, after he invites her to California to meet his family and they have an intimate tryst. But Dylan remains locked in his fear of commitment and after Jamie overhears him putting her down while talking with his sister, the third act crisis is precipitated.
It takes a little while longer before Dylan redeems himself by realizing how selfish he's been, but with the aid of two key allies, he finally sees the light. The allies who counsel Dylan are of course, Tommy, his gay co-worker, delightfully played by Woody Harrelson and Dylan's Alzheimer's afflicted father, Mr. Harper (solidly and convincingly played by Richard Jenkins).
Couldn't you guess, but despite Mr. Harper's fluctuating memory loss, he manages to impart to his son, a tale of long lost love which turns out to be the big lesson here: don't let your best shot at love slip away.
It's all very predictable and sentimental but Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis do seem to exude some chemistry, working together. I only wish their characters were a little less alienating and a little more gregarious in the first thirty to forty minutes.
In the end, 'Benefits' can only live up to its billing for its romance and not its comedy. Simply put, there's nothing funny about obnoxious, clueless people. But once these protagonists are transformed, they do become a bit more likable. Still, is this rather predictable 'love-fest', a film you'll remember for a long time? I doubt it quite a bit.
As an old fashioned morality tale, where a misguided couple realizes the error of their ways and finds 'true love' in the process, 'Benefits' fits in well with the pantheon of mediocre romcoms, populating our movie theaters today.