Just Friends: The Blind Idiot Universe
Filed under: Movies on Saturday, July 17th, 2010 by Daniel Swensen | No CommentsThe review that will leave you asking… “Why?”
The first scene of Just Friends treats us to the sight of Ryan Reynolds in a fat suit and retainer, mugging for the camera as he croons a ballad into a mirror. His chin disappears into a bulbous mass of fake flesh, from which two beady eyes gleam like wet raisins. If that alone doesn’t put you off, I don’t know what will.
Ostensibly some sort of romantic comedy, Just Friends has two big problems: it’s not romantic and it’s not funny. Reinforcing the sad stereotype of the “nice guy,” whose acts of kindness morally oblige the girl to fuck him, the movie takes us on an emotional journey through unrequited lust, humiliation, slapstick, requited lust, emotional abuse, and objectification. If it sounds like I’m about to wax pedantic about gender roles and Hollywood sterotyping, don’t be afraid: this movie is, first and foremost, merely a piece of shit, and any disturbing sociological undertones come a distant second.
Stand by for boilerplate. The year is 1995. You know because Gin Blossoms or some fucking thing is playing in the background and Chris Brander (Reynolds) offhandedly mentions Party of Five. I guess that’s what you’ve got for a nostalgia cue in the Nineties. Bill Clinton! Blowjobs! Uh… Furbies! Haha! Anyway, Brander is mooning over his smokingly hot best friend Jamie Palamino (Amy Smart), whom of course he secretly wants to bang, but she loves him like a brother. Rejected and humiliated through a deeply hilarious yearbook switcheroo right out of the John Hughes playbook, Brander departs his hometown in tears.
Fast forward a decade, apparently, where Brander is no longer fat, but instead a smug, athletic bastard who can have any woman he wants. Bewilderingly, the “other woman” in this scenario is Samantha James (Anna Faris), a braying, intolerable psychopath who unfortunately steals every scene she’s in. If you’ve ever seen Anna Faris do her shtick, it’s basically on full-blast here; Samantha is the equivalent of the racist homebots from Transformers 2, waving her arms shrieking like a dentist’s drill whether she’s directly involved in the action or not.
Anyway, Brander ends up back in his hometown after an amazingly coincidental mishap on a plane, and meets up with Jamie at the local dive. Here we’re treated to all the usual Post-High School Trauma cliches: the star quarterback is still hanging around in his letter jacket, fat and bald, drinking himself blind, while the hot girl hasn’t aged a day, still working at the bar but with Big Dreams of Making It Someday. Brander, after stammering a bit, asks her out on a date.
From here, the movie descends into thematic incoherence. At first, Brander clearly just wants to revenge-fuck his former best friend, but then apparently develops feelings for her. He deals with these feelings by treating her like garbage, then having an attack of conscience, then treating her worse than ever. The audience is subjected to lengthy, tiresome angst as Brander tries to figure out why he wants to bang Jamie — we know that he does either way, but apparently his motivations are supposed to be key.
Along the way, the entire universe conspires to physically abuse Brander, which is where the comedy supposedly comes in. Kids whale him in the balls with hockey sticks. As he lays immobilized on a hospital gurney, the paramedics drop him down a hill face-down onto a frozen lake, following up with mumbled apologies. The waitress at the local diner refuses to take his order, instead bringing him a giant stack of fudge-covered pancakes because he used to eat that when he was fat. In short, people just behave in a surreal, outlandish fashion strictly for the purposes of humiliating Brander. In volume, the effect is more depressing than funny. Also, there’s Anna Faris eating toothpaste and staggering around, semi-comatose on Vicodin. And her character doesn’t behave all that well either. (Rimshot!)
And what does Jamie think of all this? We never find out. Her character is a complete cypher, existing only as the object of Brander’s lust, and his emotions apparently being the only ones that matter. Brander valiantly attempts to save her from remorseless lothario Dusty Dinkleman, who’s just out to revenge-bang her (Chris Klein), and the movie only comments briefly on the towering irony of this before moving on to more grueling slapstick.
Finally, the film lumbers to a conclusion, where Brander turns over a new leaf and confesses his true feelings for Jamie, although not without first being tasered in the balls. Jamie, despite Brander heaping a constant barrage of emotional abuse on her, smiles and kisses him. Hooray! I’m so happy! Oh wait, I feel nothing. I don’t think I’ll feel anything ever again.
So to sum up: too much Anna Faris, a squalid storyline, and the kind of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation-era comedy violence which probably should be amusing, but isn’t. If you want to see a better romantic comedy, see The Proposal with Reynolds and Sandra Bullock. Note I didn’t say good… I said better.









