Friends with Benefits - No Strings Sex Gets Messy for Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis

Friends with Benefits - Justin Timberlake as Dylan and Mila Kunis as Jamie
(Image credit: Glen Wilson)
(Image credit: Glen Wilson)

After nasty break-ups with their exes, Justin Timberlake’s art director Dylan and Mila Kunis’s New York corporate headhunter Jamie decide to hook up for uncomplicated no-strings sex in Friends with Benefits. After all, true love is just a Hollywood cliché. Or so they convince each other until the inevitable happens and messy feelings start getting in the way – just as they did for Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman in the similarly themed No Strings Attached, released just six months ago.

Friends with Benefits is a good deal smarter and funnier than No Strings Attached, and its leads have better chemistry. Timberlake and Kunis spark well together, in and out of bed, and it’s fun watching their characters mock the conventions of Hollywood rom-coms as they watch a fake film within the film, a hilariously cheesy example of the genre starring Jason Segel and Rashida Jones.

Of course, Dylan and Jamie – and Friends with Benefits itself - finally succumb to those same clichés, but the sappy ending doesn’t entirely spoil what’s gone before. Director Will Gluck (maker of high-school comedy Easy A) gets the balance right between raunchiness and sweetness, as do the cast, who also include Woody Harrelson, going over the top as a foul-mouthed gay sports editor, Richard Jenkins as Dylan’s Alzheimer’s-afflicted father, and the ever-dependable Patricia Clarkson as Jamie’s flaky mother.

On general release from 9th September.

Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.