Review of Just Friends (2012) by Lyndon G — 23 Jan 2010

All right, well this is a nice idea with a nice moral, but the execution is pretty painful. I can see that Just Friends has a market with teenage girls and their male BFFs... in fact my younger sister really likes it and made me watch it, and her male BFF put on an amused face and mentioned something about "a good concept.

" Though there are some laughs, I must say that if you are not a teenager, these could quietly asphyxiate under the excessive and incongruous stupidity of the characters. Adults in this movie behave like thirteen-year-olds and sometimes like malfunctioning robotic imitations.

The main actor Ryan Reynolds clearly felt inspired by Jim Carrey, and I don't begrudge him that at all. Amy Smart plays his pretty friend (ie, long-term crush) quite well as a sweet twenty-something bewildered by the contortions men put themselves through.

My real problem is with the hatefully stupid and abrasive caricature played by Anna Faris. She's like a cup of sugar and a lemon pip passing for lemonade. She's like getting hit in the ear with a frisbee when you want music.

She has no redeeming feature. In short, she's about the least subtle thing I've ever seen. Everyone has their own tastes; what seems to me jarring and unrealistic may seem to you special and even just right--in both cases because of unusual emphasis.

Often the same person has these perceptions at different times. I don't fight it.