Just Friends film review

certificate_12A

JUST FRIENDS

Director Roger Kumble hit the big time with his enjoyable Cruel Intentions in 1999, and followed it up in 2002 with the disastrous The Sweetest Thing, a film which barely made back the cost of star Cameron Diaz's salary. Now he returns with another comedy, and while it's not quite the void of laughter that was his last work, it only occasionally hits the comedy target.

Just Friends does have a good premise however: how can men get out of the 'friend zone' with a girl they really like? Ryan Reynolds is Chris Brander, a final-year college student best known to his classmates as a fat loser. Chris has it all: a disturbing addiction to the Backstreet Boys, a brace, and several excess pounds of fat. He also has a crush on the school's prettiest girl Jamie (Amy Smart), and when he inadvertently blurts out his feelings to her at their leaving party proceedings inevitably end in disaster.

Fast forward to the present day and now Brander is a hotshot music executive in Hollywood, with the brace gone and the pounds shed. He can have any woman he wants, but of course the one he really desires is working back in his hometown. Thanks to a fairly convoluted plot trick, Chris arrives back to see if he can finally win the girl of his dreams.

So far so good, and there's certainly a great deal of energy in both the script and from the cast. But while the script is clearly influenced by the work of the Farrelly Brothers (with whom Kumble has been a collaborator), it doesn't show their ability to blow minor crises into absurdly hilarious situations. Here, instead of serving the characters and story, it seems the other way round, with too many obvious lead-ins to set pieces. It's a shame, but when you can clearly see what's coming a mile off, the comedy value is inevitably reduced.

Reynolds - a star of such recent B-movie output as The Amityville Horror and Blade Trinity - is amiable enough in the lead role and has fun switching between the dorky and cool sides of his character. Chris Klein, a familiar face from the American Pie series, lends decent support as his hometown nemesis. One or two of the other performances could have been reined in though.