By: Neil Smith
Can two consenting adults do the dirty without emotion getting in the way? Ask your average Premiership footballer or career politician and the answer will most likely be a resounding yes.
In the world of the Hollywood rom-com, though, love has a nasty habit of interfering with the best laid plans. So it proves in Friends with Benefits, a risqué romp that ends up reinforcing the very conventions it seeks to overturn.
That doesn't prevent it being a fun and feisty frolic that benefits hugely from the sassy interplay between Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, neither of whom are hard on the eyes exactly. But it does stop it being the genre game changer it evidently wants to be, for all director Will Gluck's striving in that direction.
Fans of bright young things copping off on camera will doubtless be familiar with No Strings Attached, in which Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman decided to base their relationship on casual sex alone. Friends with Benefits is essentially the same movie, albeit with a few elements that never quite made it into Ivan Reitman's film: namely charm, witty one-liners and a male lead you don't immediately want to punch.
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That's no mean feat given Timberlake's character, a hot-shot art director wooed from LA to New York by a lucrative new job with GQ magazine. (To deter us from hating him, Gluck gives him an ailing dad with Alzheimer's.) Oiling the wheels is executive recruiter Jamie (Kunis), a corporate head-hunter whose hefty commission depends on Justin's Dylan staying in his new role for 12 calendar months.
Mila, therefore, has a vested interest making Timberlake feel right at home in the Big Apple, something she does by showing him around town and engineering a flash mob for his amusement. Yet what starts off as a professional duty soon becomes something else once these work-oriented individuals - both of whom have been recently dumped by their respective partners - decide what they're looking for is a guilt-free good time with no messy feelings complicating their coitus.
Easy A director Gluck is so determined to convince us such a concept is possible in a mainstream Hollywood movie he arranges for his protagonists to watch a mainstream Hollywood movie - the comically clichéd faux rom-com I Love You New York - and titter at its shortcomings. Gradually, though, it becomes clear Friends with Benefits is no less constrained by Tinseltown formula, Timberlake and Kunis being far too pretty a couple not to be conjoined for real by the final reel.
It may not walk the walk, then, but it certainly talks the talk, fruity phrases like "slam piece" and "twot block" making Friends a considerably more bracing affair than your average studio offering. There are also great cameos from Adam Samberg and Emma Stone as Jamie and Dylan's soon to be exes, the latter using her fleeting appearance to proclaim that "John Mayer is the Sheryl Crow of our generation!"
Verdict: Justin's Trousersnake gets a decent work-out in this enjoyably saucy comedy.
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