Film: Friends with Benefits.

I was at the NOVOTEL Eiffel Tower, sans Internet. Technically I had NOVOTEL's 'high speed' wired connection, but Speed Test measured this at 0.07Mbps, so it may as well not exist. Add a VPN in order to get to my Netflix account from France and it would be firmly in shit dial-up territory. I partied like it was 1999, and watched a DVD instead*

Of the small selection of movies to hand, I picked Friends with Benefits…

The movie opens with Justin Timberlake in LA breaking up with someone and Mila Kunis breaking up with someone else in New York.

Kunis plays a high flying creative industries head-hunting agent. Timberlake is a high-flying creative that Kunis places with a magazine in New York.  They become friends. Neither is romantically interested in the other but come to a mutually beneficial agreement to engage in sport fucking.

There are several sex scenes played mostly for amusement rather than eroticism. Timberlake's arse is shown but not his cock or balls.  Kunis' arse and side-boobs are shown, but her nipples and mons are strictly taboo.  I don't really mind this. I don't think it's necessary to be particularly graphic in other to tell the story - on the other hand, strategically placed sheets, oral strictly under the sheets just made me aware that these were actors. The obvious method of concealment took me out of the movie.

It would have been a good opportunity to emphasise the use of condoms, but that was possibly too icky. There wasn't any evidence of any fluids - I'm sorry, but a man comes up for air from between a woman's legs, from under a sheet, and there's no sweat or saliva or ladylube on his chin/lips/nose?  Again, it just seemed to icky-avoiding.

The scene that annoyed me most was one in which Timberlake's cunnilingus wasn't doing anything for Kunis, she gave him instructions, which her followed to her satisfaction. There was a gag implying that he licked her anus, which was what she's intended,  but anything visually icky was avoided.  This open communication, with one person given pleasure-giving instructions by another was welcome, but flawed. It started by ridiculing the man's technique (which may well have exactly what his previous partner preferred).  When it came to the reciprocal blow job, Timberlake attempted to express his preference, but this evidently wasn't necessary as Kunis proceeded to immediately give him the best fellatio of his life.  While there's probably some truth to the old adage that there's no such thing as a bad blow job, it would've been a better scene had both had learn each other's likes and dislikes.  It felt a little like man-mocking, which made the movie feel very much like the chick-flick it is.

Despite the sanitised sport-fucking, Kunis' character is romantic, besotted with a Hollywood romantic ideal. Kunis curses a poster of a Katherine Heigl movie, at which point, Friends With Benefits pretty much turns into a Katherine Heigl movie and predictable rom-commery ensues: Kunis falls for Timberlake; he's too stupid too see it; She gets the hump; Timberlake still wants to hump; He misses her, figures out he loves her and then everyone figures out how to help him win her back.

It's a Sony movie, and as with some other Sony movies, product placement is far from subtle.  I need to double check, but I suspect that the Katherine Heigl movie referenced at the point that Friends With Benefits jumps the shark is yet more product placement.

Intimacy, it is not.

*The DVD had actually been ripped and converted to h.264. I don't want you to think I actually carried the media with me.