.......with my lovely wife, who has been my friendly benefactor for almost 43 years, and we both thought it was pretty good.
She liked it better than I did.
I thought "Friends with Benefits" was much more entertaining than "No Strings Attached," starring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman, which covers much of the same ground in a less interesting way, IMHO.
The Link
Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis were believable as a couple and they showed moments of real chemistry.
This is a relationship comedy with more emphasis, we found, on the bittersweet romance part and less on the humor, although there were some pretty funny lines and a few laugh out loud moments.
I think Timberlake and Kunis, as actors, do romantic comedy better than Kutcher and Portman.
Justin Timberlake can actually act a little and I suspect we're only just beginning to see what Mila Kunis accomplishes.
On the other hand, Ashton Kutcher could be the stoic Keanu Reeves of comedy and Natalie Portman's thespian efforts, thus far in her career, to my mind have been far more successfully attuned to drama.
To be fair, I believe "No Strings Attached" aimed at being a more traditional romantic comedy, while "Friends with Benefits," to my eye and ear, actually parodies that genre to some degree.
My biggest problem in "Friends with Benefits" was the, at times, fast pace of the movie.
Specifically, I felt the cinematography and film editing of the conversation scenes was generally too fast, going back and forth between the facial shots and/or closeups of Timberlake and Kunis, and simply didn't allow those actors enough opportunity to make much use of comedic timing or any pregnant pauses.
Like a tennis match moving a little too fast for me, but this speed may merely have been a reflection just how rapidly life and love goes these days.
Think of snappy, but artificial, Noel Coward type conversational repartee, but spoken in the rhythms, idioms and language of today.
This flick was pretty talky, and maybe there was a little too much of that and not enough action.
Maybe these lead actors do, or were directed to do, their comedy acting at ramming speed.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but the shots showing much of the conversational delivery and response between Justin and Mila seemed overly rushed to me.
Just a tick too fast.
This pace bothered me more than it did my dear wife, so probably it's my personal problem which other, perhaps younger and more with it, viewers won't have.
And having two flash mob sequences in the storyline did try my patience, whereas the Bollywood ending of "Slumdog Millionaire" didn't.
Go figure.
The supporting actors were very good: Patricia Clarkson, Richard Jenkins, Jenna Elfman and Woody Harrelson all did well.
And the movie generally had a different, more pleasing for me, pace when they were on screen.
There was much less nudity than I could have personally enjoyed in a friends with benefits flick, although some positions and techniques for intercourse and oral sex were tastefully depicted while covered up beneath the bedding.
Other, less tolerant, moviegoers might possibly be blindsided by this unseen explictness, moreso than were we.
I wasn't expecting or needing porno type coverage from this film, but I actually did leave the theater a bit unfulfilled in that regard given this movie's suggestive title.
There was no surfeit of bad language, although occasionally the sexual vernacular was used.
And while the sound track and music references seemed fairly random (and mostly unknown) to me, they will doubtless please others.
For a bonus, there was enough iconic New York and LA scenery included so that you knew they'd sometimes been outdoors shooting on location.
Plus, at the very, very end, the shortest gag reel in my moviegoing memory appeared and was over almost before we could sit back down to watch it.
But, this short visual finally firmed up my opinion (along with all the quick and clever 1920's and '30's style dialog I've mentioned earlier), that "Friends with Benefits" is offered to us, at least somewhat, as a cinematic spoof and not as absolute proof......
Of course, you might have to be near my advancing age to receive that particular vibe and to not be unduly influenced by the erroneous notion that the young people of today invented, perfected and/or even popularized casual sex.
Your thoughts?
She liked it better than I did.
I thought "Friends with Benefits" was much more entertaining than "No Strings Attached," starring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman, which covers much of the same ground in a less interesting way, IMHO.
The Link
Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis were believable as a couple and they showed moments of real chemistry.
This is a relationship comedy with more emphasis, we found, on the bittersweet romance part and less on the humor, although there were some pretty funny lines and a few laugh out loud moments.
I think Timberlake and Kunis, as actors, do romantic comedy better than Kutcher and Portman.
Justin Timberlake can actually act a little and I suspect we're only just beginning to see what Mila Kunis accomplishes.
On the other hand, Ashton Kutcher could be the stoic Keanu Reeves of comedy and Natalie Portman's thespian efforts, thus far in her career, to my mind have been far more successfully attuned to drama.
To be fair, I believe "No Strings Attached" aimed at being a more traditional romantic comedy, while "Friends with Benefits," to my eye and ear, actually parodies that genre to some degree.
My biggest problem in "Friends with Benefits" was the, at times, fast pace of the movie.
Specifically, I felt the cinematography and film editing of the conversation scenes was generally too fast, going back and forth between the facial shots and/or closeups of Timberlake and Kunis, and simply didn't allow those actors enough opportunity to make much use of comedic timing or any pregnant pauses.
Like a tennis match moving a little too fast for me, but this speed may merely have been a reflection just how rapidly life and love goes these days.
Think of snappy, but artificial, Noel Coward type conversational repartee, but spoken in the rhythms, idioms and language of today.
This flick was pretty talky, and maybe there was a little too much of that and not enough action.
Maybe these lead actors do, or were directed to do, their comedy acting at ramming speed.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but the shots showing much of the conversational delivery and response between Justin and Mila seemed overly rushed to me.
Just a tick too fast.
This pace bothered me more than it did my dear wife, so probably it's my personal problem which other, perhaps younger and more with it, viewers won't have.
And having two flash mob sequences in the storyline did try my patience, whereas the Bollywood ending of "Slumdog Millionaire" didn't.
Go figure.
The supporting actors were very good: Patricia Clarkson, Richard Jenkins, Jenna Elfman and Woody Harrelson all did well.
And the movie generally had a different, more pleasing for me, pace when they were on screen.
There was much less nudity than I could have personally enjoyed in a friends with benefits flick, although some positions and techniques for intercourse and oral sex were tastefully depicted while covered up beneath the bedding.
Other, less tolerant, moviegoers might possibly be blindsided by this unseen explictness, moreso than were we.
I wasn't expecting or needing porno type coverage from this film, but I actually did leave the theater a bit unfulfilled in that regard given this movie's suggestive title.
There was no surfeit of bad language, although occasionally the sexual vernacular was used.
And while the sound track and music references seemed fairly random (and mostly unknown) to me, they will doubtless please others.
For a bonus, there was enough iconic New York and LA scenery included so that you knew they'd sometimes been outdoors shooting on location.
Plus, at the very, very end, the shortest gag reel in my moviegoing memory appeared and was over almost before we could sit back down to watch it.
But, this short visual finally firmed up my opinion (along with all the quick and clever 1920's and '30's style dialog I've mentioned earlier), that "Friends with Benefits" is offered to us, at least somewhat, as a cinematic spoof and not as absolute proof......
Of course, you might have to be near my advancing age to receive that particular vibe and to not be unduly influenced by the erroneous notion that the young people of today invented, perfected and/or even popularized casual sex.
Your thoughts?
