Friends with Benefits (2011): This movie is about two extremely good looking rich people with few-to-no real problems in life and exciting jobs who decide to have sex with one another (which they look like they’re pretty good at). The movie starts with Justin Timberlake yelling something like, “I’m not a loser who uses the internet to look at naked women”, then goes and gets dumped by Emma Stone who apparently he was fucking before fucking Mila Kunis (who plays a hot girl with daddy issues who doesn’t have a boyfriend even though she has an active life where she hangs out in exciting nightclubs filled with celebrities).
I would like to meet the person who related to any character in this movie, and kick them as hard as possible in the crotch.
I hated everybody in this movie— there wasn’t any attempt to have any stakes to any of it. ”What if they don’t get together?” Then, they’ll go fuck the BILLION OTHER PEOPLE they could spend their lives fucking. The end. They both just look too young and seem too successful, where anything felt at stake besides Hot People Fucking. (Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher made this exact same movie last year and I didn’t have this problem with that one… but I felt like they at least tried to give those characters… some reason to root for them… they weren’t so crazy successful at being human beings…)
(Or like, say what you will about Hugh Grant, but in any Hugh Grant movie, I immediately 100% believe that if he doesn’t get the girl He’s Fucked Forever. He’s always some stuttering lame-o British Lord Flaunteroy guy… if Julia Roberts, Andie Macdowell, and/or Drew Barrymore— I didn’t like the one with Sandra Bullock— doesn’t put up with that, I’d buy him winding up alone. Even that movie where he was Prime Minister— he just seemed like a schmuck. Prime Schmuck).
This movie, though… it’s like the exact spiritual opposite of The Baxter. Plus: both actors (who I’ve liked other places) are their most annoying here, too— Justin Timberlake shrieks all his dialogue…? The same director made Easy A which I really, really liked…
Also: I hate this thing with romantic comedies lately where they all have to pretend they’re smarter than other romantic comedies— they’re the “smart” one, where they make fun of romantic comedies and then do the big cutesy “awwwwww” bullshit ending anyways. It’s like pretending that the movie has something to say about “modern romance,” like “Oh, it’s not like in romantic comedies,” but then you destroy that theme by (a) making your characters work for magazines— NO ONE WORKS FOR MAGAZINES, and (b) having some unbearable production number at the end. Which— I like those things; I like romantic comedies; I’m sitting down to watch a romantic comedy; just be a romantic comedy, then; I just hate when they like psuedo-apologize for it— don’t feed me crap and tell me it’s cake. It’s not like they’re even trying to make My Best Friend’s Wedding, or really defy the conventions of those movies, so what’s the point of calling attention to them? Scream at least had teenagers getting stabbed.
Oh: Woody Harrelson plays a macho gay guy, who yells constantly about how much he loves sucking cocks or whatever. Except, they cast Woody Harrelson. Which don’t get me wrong, I’m 100% in favor of him being cast in stuff— I fucking love Woody Harrelson, and think he should be in every movie, ideally playing a cantankerous alcoholic treasure hunter (sort of like Matthew McConnaughey’s character from that lame treasure movie with Kate Hudson). Still: it was more really weird than enjoyable. If you want to make some point about gay guys, why not actually cast a gay guy?
