GFF 2010: Friends (With Benefits)

 

Friends (With Benefits) is a college comedy about Chloe (Margaret Laney) and Owen (Alex Brown), two childhood sweethearts within a circle of student friends, secretly in love but engaging in platonic sex, all the while trapped in the 'friend zone'. Painfully unfunny, and styled between American Pie and Friends, Gorman Bechard's film desperately attempts to assert itself as indie from the outset. Chloe begins by  listing her sexual turn-ons in the form of Juno-esque bands, yet strangely, bland generic rock whines loudly thereafter over every abruptly edited and puerile ‘chapter’. Interchangeable sexual orientation devoid of any upheaval is demonstrated and loudly articulated by the group's various one-dimensional characters, yet when their actions do have emotional repercussions, their turmoil is overtly animated and caricatured. The dialogue attempts to be right-on whilst at the same time gross-out silly but is just mind-numbingly dull with the only succour provided by the split-screen visuals and subsequent hope that the closing credits are finally coming.