“Friends With Benefits”: Justin and Mila in the other, other sex-pals movie

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:05:00 +0000

I'm calling lazybones on all the critics who are saying that "Friends With Benefits," starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake as a couple who seek to get physical without emotional consequences, is almost exactly the same movie as "No Strings Attached," which came out six months ago and featured Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher as blah blah blah. It's actually almost exactly the same as several other movies too, notably "Going the Distance" with Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, and "Love and Other Drugs" with Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal, which in terms of degree of difficulty and actual sex appeal remains the champion of this ill-starred mini-genre (although nobody cared about it then and fewer do now). In fact, "we're just two adults doin' it like donkeys" has replaced Mr. Darcy-style misunderstandings as the central rom-com device. Bag the pride and the prejudice; whip out the ribbed condoms.

“Easy A”: The summer’s biggest comedy surprise

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 01:01:00 +0000

Look, I'm not going to claim that the high-school non-sex comedy "Easy A" is the movie of the year, or the best thing I saw in Toronto this year or anything like that. But director Will Gluck's whimsical teen inversion of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" -- it's not really an adaptation, at least not in the "Clueless"/"Emma" sense -- arrives as a thoroughly delightful surprise, after a summer full of dim and dreary comedies.

People are suddenly falling all over themselves for Emma Stone, who stars here as Olive Penderghast, a high-school wallflower who makes the crucial mistake of claiming to have had a wild one-nighter with a college student. (She hasn't.) Now, it is true that Stone is almost 22 and is undeniably cute as a doggone button, so having her play a 17-year-old who's never been kissed (unless you're counting an eighth-grade game of Spin the Bottle) may be stretching suspension of disbelief past the snapping point. But if you're willing to make allowances for Hollywood ludicrousness, she pretty nearly pulls it off.

Salon.com > Easy A

“Friends With Benefits”: Justin and Mila in the other, other sex-pals movie

“Easy A”: The summer’s biggest comedy surprise