Friends with Benefits

All the usual ingredients are here – boy meets girl; one emotionally unavailable, the other emotionally damaged – in a tale of modern friendship which delivers, despite its characters' jibes aimed at Katherine Heigl, a large serving of romantic comedy déjà vu. Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis are two beautiful but unrelatable twenty-somethings working seemingly frivolous high powered jobs and residing in swanky New York City pads surrounded by flash mobs and secret roof tops. Bemoaning their lack of sexual activity the two buddy up in order to appease their burgeoning libidos. Obvious and predictable complications ensue.

In trying so hard to be meta, with its all too savvy notation on the rom-com rules, Friends with Benefits actually falls into every predictable plot device: the screwed-up parents who give out sage advice, the disastrous family get-together, the gay best friend (Woody Harrelson), and the inevitable public declaration of love. It's this lack of surprise and its staunch adherence to the rule book it so desperately wants to show it has thrown out that makes this outing little benefit to the genre. [Thom Atkinson]