Friends with Benefits (2011)
Directed by Will Gluck
Dylan is done with relationships. Jamie decides to stop buying into the Hollywood clichés of true love. When the two become friends they decide to try something new and take advantage of their mutual attraction - but without any emotional attachment.
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What critics say influenced Friends with Benefits
Not only are their references to real life romantic films – such as the poster for “It Happened One Night” that hangs over her bed – but there’s a running gag about a made-up film that’s is one of her favorites which runs to the very end of the movie.
Preston Sturges this is not, nor Frank Capra (a poster for "It Happened One Night" hangs over Jamie's bed), nor even Judd Apatow, whose "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" much more successfully merged sweetness and saltiness.
In one scene, director Will Gluck (Easy A) shows a television playing the 1969 Paul Mazursky couples-swapping comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.
In fact, the pervasiveness of this idea in non-controversy-courting movies aimed at the mainstream multiplex may be a relatively recent development, but "Friends with Benefits" acknowledges its place as a Justin-come-lately in the history of sex-in-the-cinema by placing "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" (1969) on a television screen in the background of one scene.
As with “Easy A,” “Friends With Benefits” is a thinly-veiled showcase of Sony electronic and entertainment products: Sony VAIO laptops, Columbia Pictures’ “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” playing on a Sony flat-screen and Kris Kross’s “Jump” courtesy of Columbia Records blasting out of a Sony Ericsson phone.
Old movies like On the Waterfront and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice play on screens in the background.
There's a brief shot here where the 1969 bed-hopping wife-swapping comedy " Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice " is on in the background, and those who think that the arrangement presented here is especially moderno scandalous should check out the three-partner pact in 1933's " Design for Living ," where Gary Cooper and Fredric March share the affection of Miriam Hopkins .
If Hollywood tried to remake this movie today, they would probably take the ménage à trois set-up and strip away all the depth, so it cold be reduced to a high-concept piece of crap like Friends With Benefits .
Hollywood often bum rushes a theme for our amusement, from dueling asteroid movies in the ’90s – “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” – to the two upcoming “Snow White” movies.
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This self-consciousness is, of course, supposed to make the viewer be more accepting of these clichés when they appear in "Friends with Benefits," because, hey, the filmmakers already let you in on their secret: They're deconstructing romcoms, don't you know, the way Wes Craven deconstructed slasher movies in "Scream."
It was only a matter of time before someone took the ethos of Scream - the first horror movie about characters who had seen horror movies - and applied it to the romantic comedy.
Everything about the set-up suggests that it wants to be the Scream of rom-coms, highlighting and subverting the genre’s countless cliches and tropes to craft something fresh and bold in a landscape filled with bland cookie-cutter Kate Hudson movies.
At this point you can probably plot out the rest of the story, but this film treats the romantic comedy the way the “Scream” movies treat horror films.
Hollywood often bum rushes a theme for our amusement, from dueling asteroid movies in the ’90s – “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” – to the two upcoming “Snow White” movies.
And yet, in much the same way that "Armageddon" proved to be the better asteroid-attacking-Earth movie despite appearing several months after "Deep Impact," "Friends with Benefits" is by far the better of the two films--partly because it, unlike "No Strings Attached," is completely Greta Gerwig-free and partly because, unlike "No Strings Attached," it has bigger laughs, better chemistry between the two leads and it stays afloat longer before succumbing to the seas of conventionality.
Hollywood often bum rushes a theme for our amusement, from dueling asteroid movies in the ’90s – “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” – to the two upcoming “Snow White” movies.
Having both recently suffered grim break-up with their respective former partners (though considering that said break-ups allowed them to miss a John Mayer concert and a screening of "Pretty Woman," they should probably consider themselves lucky), neither one is especially keen to get back into the dating scene but when certain hormonal urges kick in, they decide to try to include purely physical and completely emotion-free sex into their relationship without letting it ruin the friendship.
That he does it outside a retro theatre playing “Pretty Woman” pretty much confirms his thoughts.
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But Gluck appears to be trying to mimic the rat-a-tat rhythms of traditional screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby, and all he brings out in his actors is an unappealing shrillness.
Old movies like On the Waterfront and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice play on screens in the background.