They say that if the music is too loud you're too old. If this also holds for movies, then I am so too old. "Just Friends" comes at you loud and over the top. Subtlety is definitely not director Roger Kumble's strong suit. Nor is wit. Scores of high-pitched screams puncture the soundtrack while low frequency sound effects accompany every groin shot and pratfall, of which there are plenty.
The movie opens in New Jersey with caricatured high school students who are almost as ruthless as the real thing, but lack the humanity present in even the jerkiest of real teenagers. The main character Chris (Ryan Reynolds) is an overweight boy with a retainer, and is quite odd-looking, costumed as he is for this role in what appears to be Jiminy Glick drag. He is "best friends" with Jamie (Amy Smart), the hot ditz who dates the football team yet, we are challenged to believe, remains unaware of the desires her playful wrestling awakens in forlorn Chris. The rest of the film is a concatenation of cheesy scenes that failed to elicit any audible laughter in the theater I was in.
After the painful initial set-up, ten years pass before we rejoin Chris, now a svelte master of the MTV universe living in L.A. (The movie conveniently omits any reference to college, presumably because that would only alienate its target audience.) By now Chris has learned how to use others before or while being used by them, certainly a worthy skill on either coast, but hardly the transcendence of his own unrequited high school crush, and nothing that would make his character sympathetic.
The cast performs as if it had barely attended some "SNL skit" school of acting. Unfortunately for this movie and all who pay to watch it, there is a yawning chasm between aimless shtick and comedic character acting -- emphasis on yawning. Chris does have a few darned good lines, but Reynolds delivers them as if he is too embarrassed to try to salvage something from this tripe.
We catch up with buff Chris in time to watch him make it home for Christmas for the first time since graduation--purely by accident in the midst of a most improbable business trip. (Its release date notwithstanding, "Just Friends" does not qualify as a Christmas flickit barely qualifies as a flick!) Oh yes, did I mention that Chris arrives with the country's hottest teen female pop star, Samantha James (Anna Faris) hanging on his arm and poking at his crotch? Faris does a good job of making us cringe at her lack of musical talent, while tantalizing more like a terrorist than a temptress. During a foreplay massage Samantha demands more oil with wanton abandonment then abruptly shifts gears with the deflating abruptness of a self-absorbed brat.
The movie ostensibly builds comedy around the serious issue of true happiness. Is real success a mindless career in a faraway city (portrayed as a faraway career in a mindless city)? Or does success follow from modest homespun joys, like those of the girl Chris had desired in high school, and who is now a local schoolteacher/barmaid still living at home.
Chris decides to extend his emergency layover in New Jersey because Jamie is now impressed with his trim torso and retainer-shaped smile. He feels he deserves to "boink" his old buddy, to employ the film's vernacular.
But our nouveau Kalifornicator has woefully lost touch with his roots and can't seem to hit his stride in the Garden State. Whereas Chris's scourge of yore, a crude jock with a mean streak, has fallen hopelessly into male pattern beer drinking, another scorned suitor from back in the day, Dustin (Chris Klein) appears to be more than a match for our Left Coast professional brown-noser. Dustin has reinvented himself as the ultimate woman pleaser: a sensitive stud. His sincerity is the one weapon Chris cannot match, until a twist occurs in the story, which isn't worthy of the term plot.
Two people walked out of the theater during the movie, and I would have joined them had I not been there to review the picture. But why did everyone else stay. Who knows? Maybe they were aficionados of fatuity, or perhaps they were also movie reviewers.
At least after all that noise the picture ends with a whimper. Still, I would have felt better about the whole silly business had Chris given Jamie the boot in favor of Samantha's sex and rock scenario of a future together. One broken star.
The movie opens in New Jersey with caricatured high school students who are almost as ruthless as the real thing, but lack the humanity present in even the jerkiest of real teenagers. The main character Chris (Ryan Reynolds) is an overweight boy with a retainer, and is quite odd-looking, costumed as he is for this role in what appears to be Jiminy Glick drag. He is "best friends" with Jamie (Amy Smart), the hot ditz who dates the football team yet, we are challenged to believe, remains unaware of the desires her playful wrestling awakens in forlorn Chris. The rest of the film is a concatenation of cheesy scenes that failed to elicit any audible laughter in the theater I was in.
After the painful initial set-up, ten years pass before we rejoin Chris, now a svelte master of the MTV universe living in L.A. (The movie conveniently omits any reference to college, presumably because that would only alienate its target audience.) By now Chris has learned how to use others before or while being used by them, certainly a worthy skill on either coast, but hardly the transcendence of his own unrequited high school crush, and nothing that would make his character sympathetic.
The cast performs as if it had barely attended some "SNL skit" school of acting. Unfortunately for this movie and all who pay to watch it, there is a yawning chasm between aimless shtick and comedic character acting -- emphasis on yawning. Chris does have a few darned good lines, but Reynolds delivers them as if he is too embarrassed to try to salvage something from this tripe.
We catch up with buff Chris in time to watch him make it home for Christmas for the first time since graduation--purely by accident in the midst of a most improbable business trip. (Its release date notwithstanding, "Just Friends" does not qualify as a Christmas flickit barely qualifies as a flick!) Oh yes, did I mention that Chris arrives with the country's hottest teen female pop star, Samantha James (Anna Faris) hanging on his arm and poking at his crotch? Faris does a good job of making us cringe at her lack of musical talent, while tantalizing more like a terrorist than a temptress. During a foreplay massage Samantha demands more oil with wanton abandonment then abruptly shifts gears with the deflating abruptness of a self-absorbed brat.
The movie ostensibly builds comedy around the serious issue of true happiness. Is real success a mindless career in a faraway city (portrayed as a faraway career in a mindless city)? Or does success follow from modest homespun joys, like those of the girl Chris had desired in high school, and who is now a local schoolteacher/barmaid still living at home.
Chris decides to extend his emergency layover in New Jersey because Jamie is now impressed with his trim torso and retainer-shaped smile. He feels he deserves to "boink" his old buddy, to employ the film's vernacular.
But our nouveau Kalifornicator has woefully lost touch with his roots and can't seem to hit his stride in the Garden State. Whereas Chris's scourge of yore, a crude jock with a mean streak, has fallen hopelessly into male pattern beer drinking, another scorned suitor from back in the day, Dustin (Chris Klein) appears to be more than a match for our Left Coast professional brown-noser. Dustin has reinvented himself as the ultimate woman pleaser: a sensitive stud. His sincerity is the one weapon Chris cannot match, until a twist occurs in the story, which isn't worthy of the term plot.
Two people walked out of the theater during the movie, and I would have joined them had I not been there to review the picture. But why did everyone else stay. Who knows? Maybe they were aficionados of fatuity, or perhaps they were also movie reviewers.
At least after all that noise the picture ends with a whimper. Still, I would have felt better about the whole silly business had Chris given Jamie the boot in favor of Samantha's sex and rock scenario of a future together. One broken star.