Review of Friends with Benefits (2011) by Shiira — 22 Aug 2011

Ad nauseum, in rom-com after rom-com, the man inevitably arrives at that moment when everything becomes crystal clear, in regard to the woman he loves yet carelessly let slip away. As a corrective measure to his mistake, the man saves the relationship by proving his love with the right words to the woman, who only moments ago, stood in resignation with her dashed hopes.

Usually the woman is standing in an airport terminal. Usually the man gets there by some mode of frantic transport. Usually they seal the deal with a kiss. Reared on formulaic filmmaking, it's no wonder that Tom Hansen in "500 Days of Summer", continues to misread the ending of "The Graduate", his favorite film about true love which he shares with Summer Finn, as happy.

Except for the people who understand that Benjamin Braddock and Elaine Robinson are not in love, nobody has ever said, "Shut up, Katherine Ross, you stupid liar!" Especially Summer, who can plainly see the ambivalence forthwith, grow among the young folks in the back of the bus, when only a moment ago, the part that Tom, after all these years, is still reeling from, shows Benjamin crashing Elaine's wedding, plaintively crying out her name while he rattles the big church window with his fists.

In a flash, however, the emotional high of stealing the bride from the groom, peaks when young Ben traps the angry congregants by barricading the doors with a cross, the Christian icon he uses as a weapon against institutionalized love, waving it around like a bat.

On the bus, the moviegoer waits for him to kiss the runaway bride, but he doesn't even touch Mrs. Robinson's daughter, let alone, hold her gaze for more than a heartbeat. Using selective memory, Tom tries to pigeonhole "The Graduate" with any other romantic comedy, most of which depict love as a byproduct emanating from the grand romantic gesture, usually in a public place with adoring onlookers.

Summer, however, in that repertory house, doesn't miss a thing; she sees the film's authorial commentary, an in-film post-script, about the artifice of movie love, and breaks it off with Tom later over pancakes.

At the diner, Summer compares themselves to Sid and Nancy, an apra pro allusion to the punk rock aesthetic of the Nichols film, in the sense that Benjamin and Elaine are nihilists for rebelling against convention.

Don't blink, and you'll see how "Friends with Benefits", like the tagline for "500 Days of Summer" states, ultimately, "is not a love story," as well, with its "Graduate"-esque coda, ergo a deconstruction of the romantic comedy in the last frame.

Too conventional for the label "meta-film", the film has just enough subversiveness to trump its climactic scene at Grand Central Station, where Dylan tells Jamie, without a trace of irony, that he's in love with her, turning their lives into the very thing(a romantic comedy), they both had agreed was fictive; merely a Hollywood construct which damages people with its unrealistic idealism pertaining to relationships.

In an earlier scene, Jamie convinces Dylan to scale the Hollywood sign, representational of the fact that the executive recruiter believes in celluloidal love, although at times the woman forsakes the faerie tale, like when she publicly rails against Katherine Heigl, the scapegoat of her romantic woes.

Meanwhile, the art designer gets stuck up there and requires the services of a helicopter, analogous to the rescue being executed by the film's satirical form, whose self-awareness is supposed to set the movie apart from contemporaneous examples of the genre, such as "The Ugly Truth".

But just because the film foregrounds the artificiality of the "meet-cute", it doesn't make the "meet-cute"(where Jamie chases an I.D. sign on the baggage carousel) go away. A trope is still a trope, even when it's filmically italicized.

As a result, the film can hardly be called a satire, not with a touch so light that the skewering comes off less as a criticism of genre convention than a reason for optimism where life could imitate art.

Luckily, although the two leads are far from being the next Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn(the referencing of Amazon.com alludes to "Desk Set", a 1957 film about computers which was dead wrong in predicting the relevancy of people), they're also equidistantly ahead of Heigl and "Killers" co-star Ashton Kutcher, as well.

To it's credit, the film gets real in the final scene, where Dylan and Jaime, now, supposedly more than friends with benefits, suddenly look awkward and bored, as they share a booth in the cafe. They're the couple from "The Graduate", but with a crucial difference.

Instead of extending the silence, they reach across the table and tear into each other, in essence, updating "When Harry Met Sally" by faking love instead of an orgasm. They're not meant for each other, as advertised, but unlike Benjamin and Elaine, it won't stop them from having sex.