Will Gluck explores the tender trap of 'just good friends'

THE premise of Friends with Benefits is not new, but director Will Gluck's vision has produced a touching and funny romantic comedy. 

Friends With Benefits

WILL Gluck, the director of Friends with Benefits, is on record as saying that he wrote the film with Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis in mind.

Oh yes? This is the sort of unprovable assertion regularly trotted out in studio press kits, and I offer it for what it's worth. But in this case, one can almost believe it.

Friends with Benefits, a romantic comedy with plenty of uninhibited sex scenes, explores the idea that affairs can be carried on satisfactorily without any complicating notions of love or commitment.

And who better than Timberlake, with his permanent air of engaging insouciance, his name already romantically linked (as we say) with Britney Spears, Cameron Diaz, Jessica Biel and others, to play the leading guy?

As for Kunis, her sex scenes display a degree of athleticism unmatched since her role as Natalie Portman's ballet dancing rival in Black Swan. In Gluck's film she looks sexier than ever.

Only four writers are credited this time, including Gluck, along with five producers, and they've come up with a nifty storyline, a snappy screenplay and some engaging performances from a first-rate ensemble cast.

The theory that sexual attraction can be insulated from the more tender and protective emotions isn't exactly new (it was the prevailing joke in most 1930s screwball comedy), but Timberlake and Kunis somehow manage to suggest that they're exploring uncharted territory.

Timberlake plays Dylan, who works for a small internet company in Los Angeles. Jamie (Kunis) is keen to recruit him for the art director's job at GQ magazine in New York and eventually succeeds.

Both are disillusioned with their experiences of the opposite sex ("I'm just going to shut myself down emotionally, like George Clooney"), but inevitably a powerful attraction springs up between them.

Can it be quarantined as a sex-only affair? One can only try. A solemn sex-only oath is sworn by both parties, who lay their hands on a Bible fetched up on someone's iPad, and anyone who finds this scene offensive is advised to watch no further.

The outcomes are predictable enough, but Gluck enriches the film with charming glimpses of New York and LA, as if both cities were being seen for the first time. The mass rap-dancing sequences and the episode on the Hollywood sign are especially appealing. And the supporting case never lets him down.

Woody Harrelson makes a hilarious gay sports editor at GQ, and the excellent Patricia Clarkson, who appeared in Easy A (Gluck's first film as director), exudes all her benevolent wisdom as Jamie's mother.

We know that traditional values are firmly in place when the big kissing moment at the end looks more serious than all that other stuff. Friends with Benefits is like a Judd Apatow sex farce with lashings of old-fashioned romantic sentiment.

The film is touching and funny, and Timberlake proves again that he's a better actor than most pop stars. My favourite line is Jamie's, when Dylan persuades her to his point of view: "You're preaching to the congregation."

Friends with Benefits (M)
3 stars
National release