Every year many romantic comedy movies are released, some much better than others. I tend to like that type of movie if they are well done so I see a lot of them. Unfortunately it is very hard to tell from previews just how good a movie will be, so I’ve ended up sitting through some really bad ones. When I first saw previews for Just Friends, I really wasn’t interested in seeing it. They I heard some commercials that compared the humor in it to the humor in The 40 Year Old Virgin and Wedding Crashers. Since I liked those movies, I decided I wanted to see Just Friends. By the time I made that decision, the movie was gone from the theater here in town so I had to wait to rent it.
Chris Bender was very overweight and picked on in high school. Despite that, his best friend was Jamie Palamino, the most popular girl in their class. Chris had stronger feelings for Jamie that she just didn’t return. After being humiliated at a graduation party over those feelings, Chris left town. Ten years later he’d lost a lot of weight and was living in Los Angeles where he worked for a record company. He’d turned into a ladies man, sleeping with as many women as he could. Shortly before Christmas, his boss, KC, sent him to Paris with Samantha James, a high-strung singer that he’d slept with once. After that she was basically stalking him, thinking they had a relationship when he was actually scared of her at times. Chris was less than thrilled when the plane was forced to land by his former hometown and he’d have to spend a few days there while it was fixed. He saw Jamie again and was still attracted to her. Since he was going to be stuck in town for a few days, he decided to go after Jamie and get her in bed to make up for the past. Jamie did seem happy to spend time with him again, but he faced competition from another former geeky classmate, Dusty, that was also after Jamie for sex.
The basic plot in Just Friends of having someone return home after being gone for years and changing a lot before returning home had potential that wasn’t followed through on. Chris had some pretty bad experiences in high school, culminating in the humiliation at the graduation party. That part was believable and it was understandable why he would want to leave and not see any of his classmates again. Many people had less than wonderful experiences in high school and could probably relate at least a little bit to what Chris went through. Once Chris was back, he became obsessed with showing off, especially around Jamie. He acted like an arrogant jerk a lot of the time. Only a short amount of time at the beginning of the movie was taken to show Chris as an overweight teenager. He seemed like he was a nice person then. Once the movie jumped forward, only a few minutes were taken to show him before he ended up back home. He was popular with women in Los Angeles, but not enough of his life there was shown to know for sure if he had already turned into a jerk or if that didn’t happen into he decided to get Jamie into bed. People around town still referred to when he was overweight which annoyed him a lot and did seem to bring out the jerk in him. I do remember hearing about the fat suit that Ryan Reynolds had to wear before I saw the movie. I had thought that he would be in the suit for more of the movie than he actually was.
I was disappointed by the humor in Just Friends. It was no where near as funny as The 40 Year Old Virgin or Wedding Crashers. I’m still trying to figure out why someone said that. I’m thinking it was just a marketing attempt to make Just Friends as successful as those movies. It would have helped if this movie was as funny and entertaining. There were really only a few funny scenes. Other things were done in attempts at humor at Chris’s expense. There were unending cracks about how fat he’d been in high school which got old. There were some attempts to use gross and juvenile humor that I didn’t think worked that well. The movie did make me laugh a few times, but I really didn’t think it was that good of a comedy. It just wasn’t funny enough. Too much of the movie dragged because the humor fell flat. There weren’t any surprises in the movie and it was very predictable.
The majority of Just Friends took place around Christmas. Chris hadn’t been back home to see his mother or brother in a long time so it was the first time he was home for Christmas in years. Decorations were frequently shown in the background of scenes and I remember hearing a few Christmas songs. Even though most of the movie was set around Christmas, the holiday really didn’t have that much importance in the movie. This is not a fun or happy Christmas movie in any way. People looking for a good Christmas movie should look elsewhere.
I didn’t think the romance aspect of Just Friends worked either. For most of the movie, Chris was just trying to get Jamie in bed. He wasn’t interested in maybe starting a relationship with her. He just wanted to use her for sex and then take off back to his life in Los Angeles. He didn’t seem to have any actual feelings for her beyond sexual attraction. Another former male classmate of Jamie’s that had a crush on her in high school had also managed to change since graduation and was also trying to get Jamie in bed just for sex. No one was interested in an actual relationship. Samantha kept jumping Chris every time she could, wanting to have sex with him again. In her messed up thinking, they had a committed relationship. It just wouldn’t sink in that Chris wasn’t interested in her anymore. She tried to intimidate Chris into having sex with her again. One time she even used a taser on him. Nothing about the situation was romantic. Jamie’s feelings seemed to change really fast. That didn’t seem that realistic to me. There were several sexual situations and discussions throughout the movie. A few characters showed some skin without actually getting naked.
Chris was the main character and most developed in Just Friends. He changed a lot about his life and had a successful career. He also seemed to have turned into a sex obsessed jerk. He acted like an idiot several times and didn’t seem to care about the feelings of other people. I didn’t think the character was that likeable. Ryan Reynolds was fine in the part, though I think he could do better with better material. He did the best in could with what he had to work with. Jamie was made out to be this perfect angel. It seemed like every man around her wanted her and thought she was wonderful. I didn’t see why. She was a nice enough person, but I just didn’t see why she inspired such devotion from men. Amy Smart was all right in the part without being anything special. She did end up using this annoying screech in a scene or two that I’ve heard her do in other movies.
Samantha James was a very popular, somewhat ditzy singer. It seemed like she was meant to poke fun at Brittany Spears, though I could be wrong about that. She was deluded about the relationship she had with Chris and flipped out with no warning more than once. She was an annoying character. Anna Faris was all right in the part. Chris’s mom was around in a few scenes once he was back home. She seemed nice enough. There just wasn’t enough time devoted to her to really know anything about her. Julie Haggerty, from the Airplane movies, was fine in the part. Chris and his younger brother Mike didn’t seem to have that good of a relationship. They were always arguing and Mike kept bringing up how fat Chris use to be. The brothers acted like two little kids around each other which got old very fast for me. Christopher Marquette wasn’t anything special in the part.
KC was Chris’s boss. KC wanted Chris to basically pamper Samantha so she would make a new CD for their company. Stephen Root really didn’t have much to do. He had a much bigger part in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. He also provided one of the voices in Finding Nemo and Ice Age. I think the name of other former classmate that was after Jamie was Dusty but I can’t remember for sure. The character was very flat, forgettable, and really not that likeable. He’d also been a geek in high school and managed to change. He seemed like even more of a sex fiend than Chris turned into. Dusty was a paramedic that played the guitar and he would use both those things to hit on women. He was a jerk. Chris Klein, who was in American Pie and American Pie 2, was all right in the part.
Main Cast
Anna Faris - Samantha James
Julie Haggerty - Chris’s Mom
Chris Klein - Dusty
Christopher Marquette - Mike
Ryan Reynolds - Chris Brander
Stephen Root - KC
Amy Smart - Jamie Palamino
Roger Kumble - Director
Just Friends is now available to rent and own on VHS and DVD. I rented the DVD. There were a few special features included on the disc. I watched the bloopers and deleted scenes. Even the bloopers weren’t that funny. There wasn’t anything special in the deleted scenes either.
Just Friends tried and failed to be a good, entertaining romantic comedy. The comedy and romance aspects both fell flat, which made me loose interest in the movie. By the end I really didn’t care what happened. Don’t bother with this one. Check out The 40 Year Old Virgin or Wedding Crashers instead.
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