Friends with Benefits

I went to the movie theater by myself (first solo mission - wasn't bad at all) to see Friends with Benefits at an advanced screening through Gofobo.  Go there, sign up, and you'll get emailed two tickets to advanced screenings of movies in your area.  You're welcome.

Even though I've been signed up for a year, this was the first movie I actually attended.  Because it's an advanced screening, the theater personnel are super paranoid about video cameras taking bootleg copies of the movie, and they actually take your cell phone, put it in a paper bag, and hand you a ticket with the advice not to lose the ticket.  Uh... yuh buddy.  It ended up being fine, but I easily could have departed the theater with 14 iPhones, and in the future I might just leave my phone at home rather than deal with separation anxiety throughout another movie.  Call me neurotic, I can take it.

Source

The movie was adorable.  Yes, I love love and JT, but this was better than that.  If anyone has seen No Strings Attached - which was also good and chick-flicky - this blew it out of the water.  The characters are stronger; their dialogue is better - banter!  God, I love banter - and I think it better captured the emotions behind friends crossing the line.  Everything was inside jokes and teasing and ultimately it was pride that broke up the power balance and caused the obligatory third quarter rift.  Oh, and there were gratuitous flash mobs to melt your heart.

Where NSA panders to the "girl who's too busy for love because of grad school but wants a guy who will just hopelessly fall at her feet and let her walk all over him even though she swears she doesn't need a guy in her life" -- Friends with Benefits was more realistic.  Even the most stressed out busy people want love, (take my law school class, we're all a lovesick mess) and I think the latter did a better job of portraying the complexity of friendship turning into something more, the emotional risk and vulnerability that go into taking such a leap, while managing to be bitingly funny.  It got me to suspend my disbelief and invest in the characters and their relationship in a way that NSA never quite pulled off.  I loved it, I want to go see it again, and boys: take notes here.

My threshold for chick flicks is admittedly pretty low - I just want to walk out of the theater feeling happy and hopeful - but Friends with Benefits is funny enough to satisfy even my male counterparts out there.  Especially one that would watch a pirated copy of the Proposal in bed alone on a Saturday morning.

For those keeping score: here's looking at you, Brenny.