Review of Friends with Benefits (2011) by Jake C — 07 Aug 2018

Although the dialogue is snappy and the performances charismatic, something about the movie is just too lifeless to maintain interest, especially in those scenes where only one of the two is present and the movie can't rely on their chemistry or badinage.

Early on the movie makes a few clever swipes at the rom-com formula, but brimming with shallow and thinly sketched characters-the "aging debilitated parent," the "emotionally supportive sibling," the "douchebag alternative romantic interest," characters who have no existence beyond their archetypes-the film inevitably falls into the usual tropes.

In a sense, that is an inevitable problem for the movie, because it is the whole narrative thrust: A relationship that recedes from a modern, progressive arrangement to the more traditional romantic structure-not that anything is wrong with the latter, but cinematically it feels like one long deflation.