Friends with Benefits

Friends With Benefits is an ultra-shallow, assembly line comedy that thinks it is a cut above the usual ultra-shallow, assembly line comedy but soooooooo isn’t.  The premise--can opposite-sex friends hook up sexually without all the complications of a romantic relationship?--is handled far better in this years’ other friends-with-benefits movie, No Strings Attached with Natalie Portman and Austin Kutcher, though both movies have similar flaws in terms of their antiseptic treatment of this subject.  This film, though, is far more guilty of underselling its audience.  Indeed, the first half of the movie is so slick and contrived it is downright insulting.  The two lead actors are attractive, but their characters are completely two-dimensional and totally unbelievable.  The second half of the movie starts to redeem itself a tiny bit, but not enough to make this a film worth sitting through.