Valentine’s Marathon: Friends With Benefits (2011)

This year’s start of the Valentine’s Marathon was actually a complete spontaneous choice.  I decided this morning that I wanted to watch a romantic comedy and didn’t want to get out of bed and saw this in my Netflix list so I watched it.

Director: Will Gluck

Cast: Mila Kunis, Justin Timberlake, Patricia Clarkson, Jenna Elfman, Richard Jenkins, Woody Harrelson

Jamie (Mila Kunis) is an emotionally damaged headhunter who just fell out of a relationship and decides to not get emotionally attached in another relationship.  While at her job, she is sent to help connect Dylan (Justin Timberlake) to a art director position for the GQ.  Dylan has his own set of commitment issues and also is single as well.  He also ends up moving to New York City for the job and end up being good friends with Jamie.  Being in similar situation, they decide that to fulfill the desire for sex, they would never want to date each other so it would be easy to keep it simple with a friends with benefits relationship. Except, is it really that simple?

There’s only one specific reason that I’ve been putting off watching Friends with Benefits and thats Justin Timberlake.  I like JT as a singer, more his older stuff but as an actor, he really has a lot of space of improvement.  I mean, a long long way.  Bad Teacher was a disaster, In Time was simply average, was he in something else? Point is, I recently just starting liking Mila Kunis so I was worried that JT would bring this down.  I’m happy to say that he didn’t! Justin Timberlake finally  has a movie that I enjoy.  I think it really has to do with Will Gluck being the director because that man also did Easy A and I have immense love for it, just read my review HERE!

Friends With Benefits is nothing extraordinary in the world of romantic comedies but the chemistry between Justin Timberlake’s Dylan and Mila Kunis’s Jamie is very good. They are entertaining to watch and I found myself laughing quite a bit.  Its an entertaining movie and a fun premise.  I don’t know how feasible friends with benefits actually are in reality but it doesn’t matter because in reality its about being able to be in a relationship with someone that you can be completely straight-forward with and thats besides all the emotions and feelings.

Isn’t that so true? And thats why this movie is so great! Because its just so true. A lot of girls will have fairy tales in their minds.  My best friend will probably give me the “I know you do” look.  Yeah, I’m a romantic but even me, I still remember updating my fairy tale.  Awesome quote, right? But you know, this comes to the point that I love Patricia Clarkson.  She’s an amazing actress.  Even though she is only a supporting role, she always does a great job. Another supporting role that had me laughing out loud was Woody Harrelson. I’m starting to really like this guy.  This guy is just so enjoyable to see on screen.  Love it!

I’m heavily medicated with cough meds right now so I’m going to stop the review here.  Friends With Benefits is an enjoyable and fun romantic comedy.  Its nothing like the best thing I’ve seen but I’d gladly sit down to watch it again.  Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake have great chemistry and the supporting roles help to make it funny.  And they have some amazing quotes.  That sounds like a good rom-com to me. 🙂 Oh wait, and there’s a cameo with Emma Stone and some tribute to Easy A.  Its pretty awesome!

Have you seen Friends with Benefits? What do you think about Mila Kunis?

Being on meds is the best time to watch romantic comedies (and probably Nicholas Sparks movies).  I’d say this Valentine’s marathon kicked off with a decent start (so much better than the Superbowl game at least)…

In Time (2011)

On the weekend, my boyfriend’s coworker lent him this flick In Time.  I’m personally not a huge fan of Justin Timberlake.  I’ve had that discussion back when I reviewed Bad Teacher .  Not impressed by him much.  However, I’m okay with Amanda Seyfried.  Plus, I’ve been intrigued by the concept of this movie.

Director: Andrew Niccol

Cast: Justin Timberlake, Amanada Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Olivia Wilde, Matt Bomer, Alex Pettyfer

In the future, the population has been imprinted with a digital timer on their arms which activates the moment they turn 25.  They are destined to have eternal youth but when this clock starts, it is set to only countdown for 1 more year.  Everything will be paid and earned by the minutes and hours and rarely years in their life.  Your wealth is equivalent to the amount of time you own remaining in your life.  Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is a normal guy who works in a low job and lives literally by the day with his mom who is in the same situation. When he saves a fed up rich guy called Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer) with over a century on his clock who comes into this local bar, Will spots trouble.  He saves Henry from the bad guys in the area led by Fortis (Alex Pettyfer) who spends his life taking time from other people.  When he wakes up, he realizes that not only did Henry give him all his time but that Henry had timed out himself which causes Will to be tracked down by the Timekeeper Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy) who accuses him of murder.  In the course of events, he meets a rich man who owns the time lending in all the area Weisz and his beautiful daughter Sylvia and eventually takes her as hostage as they run away.

I hold true that the concept of this movie was pretty cool.  Using time as the center of replacing wealth because most of us know the saying time equals money, right? To apply that as the tool for how people survive seems to make sense and to use it in a world that is divided into time zones and in the most richest time zone called New Greenwich, we know that the standards of living are higher as crossing into that zone would be many times higher than the previous one. I bought the premise of the setting that this story was set in.

However, this movie was quite average.  It was enjoyable in the beginning when trying to understand what was going on and in the last bit leading to the ending. The middle gets a bit slow for my taste.  How do I know? Because when a movie doesn’t captivate me, I start walking around the kitchen and opening the cupboards and fridge trying to find something to eat.  Its just a habit I have.  Eventually, it just felt like the movie wasn’t going to end.  I think what happened  is that it became (too) predictable. BUT…let me just add I really enjoyed how it ended.

Our main actor Justin Timberlake really didn’t do too much for me. He definitely was better than in Bad Teacher. At least in this one he has a respectable character. One that wants to change the world he is in so that no one is immortal but to achieve some sort of equality and take down the walls separating everyone from the differences of time in the time zones.  Amanda Seyfried was a bit more interesting because she learned and changed as the situation progresses.  But something didn`t make me connect too much with her. Don’t get me wrong…she has been in many movies that I enjoy and she was alright in this one.  Was it my favorite role from her…probably not though.

As much as the main characters didn’t really connect with the movie itself much, I found that the supporting cast was quite good.  For one, I really liked Olivia Wilde.  She was very beautiful and pretty cool for the time that she had in the movie.  Another actor I’d like to mention is Cillian Murphy.  This guy is a pretty kick ass actor in my book.  He’s done some pretty awesome movies like 28 Days Later and Nolan`s Batman.  In this one, I actually thought he made this movie a lot better.  His character was interesting in its own (and frustrating at times) but then he really brought more action and spark to the flick.  He was probably the favorite part of this for me.

Overall, this is an average movie.  I would actually recommend it based on the interesting premise that it chooses.  Its a pretty good flick to just sit back and watch when there isn’t anything else on or whatnot.  It has some good performances and between some slower parts in the middle, it does also have some fun parts here and there.

Have you seen this? What do you think of the premise of this movie using Time is Money as the concept? How about the actors and actresses here? Anyone of them have any particular roles you enjoy?

Bad Teacher (2011)

I wasn’t expecting to get back into romantic comedies so soon but this one just happened to be chosen out of the unwatched list at home. It was time to watch it since I should return it to my friend afterwards. The past weekend was CRAZY! I have a good amount of reviews to write up and its getting all backlogged.  Hopefully I’ll get it up this week.

Director: Jake Kasdan

Cast: Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Jason Segel, Lucy Punch

Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is a junior high school teacher who is just has her engagement broken off from a rich man.  Her priority has always to find a rich husband and now she wants to do that by getting herself breast implants. Conveniently, as she is forced to go back to work as a junior high school teacher, she meets Scott (Justin Timberlake) who is a rich substitute teacher.  She tries to get him to notice her while pretending to be involved in the school activities and her class, when all she does is be disrespectful, inappropriate and rude.  However, when she learns that if her class can score the highest score in the state exams, she will be rewarded with a huge monetary prize, she starts changing the way she teaches.  As she is pursuing Scott, Elizabeth is being chased by the persistent gym teacher, Russell (Jason Segel).  While Scott seems to be growing more fond of another teacher, Amy (Lucy Punch) who suspects Elizabeth of her bad teaching ways and wants to continuously dig up dirt on her to get her kicked out of the school. Between everything going on, will she get what she wants?

Let’s just say I didn’t hate the flick, however, I won’t be adding it to my collection either.  The story is pretty simple.  If you are a Cameron Diaz fan, she really does amazing.  My boyfriend and I sat there hating on her character and shaking our heads as to how disgusting a person like that actually would be.  Thats exactly what her role is supposed to do, so she did it right on! Went straight for getting under our skins as a superficial, inappropriate and rude effortless teacher.  You can’t get any better at that (maybe you can), and she lights up this movie.

 

On the other hand, Justin Timberlake has yet to convince me that he can act.  Maybe he just needs to pick better movies.  If you have one, please tell me.  JT was part of N’Sync and I liked that group when I was younger (I know I know, you can laugh) On top of that, he had the weirdest expressions in this movie. Maybe the movie required that, but it was disturbing to me.  Especially one of the scenes…but I won’t say which one to not spoil anyone’s “fun” if you haven’t seen it.  Okay, I have to move on from this character and attempt to erase that image from my mind.  So I’ll move on to Jason Segel, whom I loved.  I haven’t seen him in much before this but he was awesome! Maybe I like to root for the underdog in love stories but he was a fun character, plus he delivered some good lines.  I’m down for more Jason Segel after this…(about that, I have to find time to finish The Muppets)

For this one though, it was less about the romance than it was the girly unfriendliness between the characters of Elizabeth and Amy.  It wasn’t anything bad but it was entertaining to watch.  It had me guessing as to what would happen next.  Lucy Punch isn’t a bad actress.  She’s average but she had some ridiculous moments as well but then, the parts where she interacted with Cameron Diaz, it made me laugh.

I’m not sure I’m totally down to see this movie again and I’m definitely not going to recommend it highly.  But, if it happens to land on TV for free and you happen to want a laugh here and there, its not completely bad.  Cameron Diaz shines at being the ultimate bad teacher and she, at the very least, will entertain you 🙂