Movie vs. Movie: Friendly and Stringless
Groundbreaking? Revolutionary? Not Exactly.
By Tom Houseman
April 23, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
If my brain was a mesh sieve, then the these two romantic comedies are so slight that they slip through with almost no resistance. And yes, rom-coms are supposed to be light, forgettable fluff; that's part of their appeal. But considering I still have fairly substantial memories of tripe like Music & Lyrics (it helps that I can recite the entirety of Pop! Goes My Heart), you would think that two films that try to push the boundaries of what a romantic comedy can be would end up feeling slightly more substantial. Both films think that they are revolutionary in both the topic they present and the way they present it. If When Harry Met Sally is the definitive “can men and women be just friends?” film, then both of these films attempted to redefine the question for a sluttier generation: “can men and women be just friends who have sex?”
Of course, such a notion is not as revelatory as these films imagine it to be, and the target audiences of these films are likely very familiar with the idea of casual sex. But if Strings and Friends are not revolutionary, they are at least different, able to wear the mask of a traditional rom-com while sticking out their tongues, putting their thumbs in their ears and wiggling their fingers. Both films are charming in their own way, but it is the very disparate tactics each film uses to tell their story that show just how different they are not just from the '90s rom-coms from which they diverge, but from each other.
No Strings Attached
No Strings Attached attempts to find a sweet spot between old-fashioned rom-com and Apatow raunchiness. Its goal is to meld crude humor with earnest quirkiness, clever risque dialogue with goodnatured sentimentality. If Knocked Up breaks too much from the mold, Strings wants to be slightly less outrageous, slightly more traditional. It succeeds to a point, but sacrifices the opportunity to be interesting and memorable in the process.
Rom-coms (except for the few truly exceptional ones) are defined in part by how fake their characters are. The love interests seem designed for the express purpose of meeting each other, falling in love, being pulled apart by a tragic misunderstanding, and then overcoming their flaws so that they can be together at the end. Once the credits start rolling it is safe to assume that they evaporate. This is the problem that plagues Strings. The protagonists are as bland and simple as you can get. Emma is a doctor (my mother once told me that when the main female character in a movie is either a doctor or a stripper it is a sign that the character was lazily written) and Adam is a PA on a show that is similar to but for legal purposes not Glee. She is emotionally distant, he is a romantic, and that is all we need to know about these characters.
As in almost every rom-com, there is a cast of quirky supporting characters to act as sounding boards for the protagonists and inject witty repartee into every conversation. This group tends to be the best part of this kind of movie (Justin Bartha and Zoey Deschanel were the saving grace of Failure to Launch), and Greta Girwig, Mandy Kaling, Guy Branum, Jake Johnson, and Ludacris all pull their weight. But really, they serve no purpose other than to pepper dialogue with comedic banter, and never for a second do they feel like real people. Kevin Kline's obnoxious stoner dad character grates every moment he is on screen, the only character who is not only one-dimensional but actively detracts from the quality of the film.
Ivan Reitman makes the smart choice of directing Strings as if it were a comedy that just happens to be built around a romance, rather than a romance with jokes. The comedy always takes center stage, which makes the film entertaining enough, but the romance is unable to hold up its end of the bargain, and the more the film focuses on the plot the more it drags. Emma and Andy are such bland characters, and Portman and Kutcher have so little chemistry, that it is impossible to care about either of them. Strings works in a few ways, but in its goal to be a 21st Century When Harry Met Sally it comes up very short.
Friends with Benefits
Friends with Benefits takes a different approach than its stringless counterpart. If Strings pushes the boundaries of what a rom-com is expected to be, then you could say that Friends twists them. It understands all of the tropes and cliches of its genre and effectively subverts them, undercutting audience expectations by moving the story in unexpected ways. Considering that most rom-coms build towards the couple sleeping together, the idea that the plot is built around the couple sleeping together is itself subversive (if not as shocking and groundbreaking as either of these movies think it to be), which makes the use of this plot to turn the traditional rom-com on its head an effective one.
If only this form of subversion didn't come off as quite so lazy. Friends knows that it is clever, that it is intentionally toying with the genre, and it decides to be as obvious about this as possible, shouting “look how clever and different I am” over and over. Part of the way the movie plays with genre expectations is by having its protagonists, Dylan and Jamie, watch scenes from a fake romantic comedy starring Jason Segel and Maya Rudolph. This is an easy way for the film to point out how much better it is than most rom-com trash, but the scenes that we see are too obvious and simple to be funny. The film consistently goes for the easy laugh, seemingly confusing obvious with clever.
Like Strings, Friends often comes off as fake, but the difference is that Friends embraces and flaunts how fake it is. In the opening scene we see Dylan and Jamie get dumped by their respective significant others, and in both cases the other (Andy Samberg and Emma Stone) state directly what is wrong with the two characters: Dylan chooses his work over everything else and Jamie is too idealistic about love and emotionally damaged. This extreme bluntness is a refreshing change of pace, and sets the tone for the way the characters discuss their romantic lives. They are so straightforward that it comes off as unrealistic, but because the film celebrates this trait rather than covers it up, it highlights that this film is intended to be a twist on the traditional rom-com.
Of course, if the characters felt fake the conceit would collapse under its own weight, because there needs to at least be a sense that we are watching people worth caring about. In that respect Friends is far more successful than Strings. The characters in Friends are delicately crafted and wonderfully detailed, which makes them feel very real. It is the absurdity of their character traits that lend them an authenticity. Dylan's propensity to rant about how easy planes are to land is so ridiculous that you can imagine sitting next to someone exactly like that on a plane and thinking they are kind of an idiot. Friends is not determined - as Strings seems to be - to make its characters as likeable as possible. Rather, giving the characters real flaws makes them more relatable and easy to root for.
The supporting characters also prove to be more than just generic rom-com sounding boards. Woody Harrelson's gay sports editor is a delightfully quirky character who is so different from Dylan that he brings his own unique energy to the scene. Patricia Clarkson, as Jamie's mother, is essentially a more outrageous version of her mother role in Easy A, but she is so entertaining that you can forgive her for being slightly derivative. What is important is that both of these characters have their own lives outside of the plot of the film; you do not get the sense that they disintegrate he moment they are off screen. In addition, seeing Dylan's family gives the film a weightiness that is rare for the genre. Dylan's father is suffering from Alzheimer's, and the film uses these scenes to tell us that while romance is fun and exciting, that there are far more important matters in our lives than who we happen to be sleeping with.
The biggest problem with Friends is not just that the film itself could be so much better, but that we have recently seen a similar film that was so much better. Just a few years ago Will Gluck directed Easy A, which does to teen movies what he attempts to do with rom-coms in Friends, turning expectations on their head and giving us something new and exciting. Friends can't quite get the rom-com on its head, never putting enough force into it, and leaves it instead on its side, flapping about like a fish. This is certainly more entertaining than a rom-com planted firmly on its feet, but it leaves piles of potential on the table, and suffers in comparison to the vastly superior Easy A.
Which is Better?
While I think I have made it abundantly clear that I prefer Friends with Benefits to No Strings Attached, I am willing to acknowledge that this is a personal preference, and that some people will be less enticed by what Friends has to offer. If you are looking for a more traditional rom-com that is still able to spice things up, then Strings will be more up your alley. To make an analogy to horror films, Friends is to Strings as The Cabin in the Woods is to Saw.
What holds both films back is that they are too willing to compromise. Both want to give the audiences something new while still allowing them the comfort of consuming a product that fits comfortably within the rom-com framework. Friends does take more liberties with this, but neither take any risks. If Strings wants you to have your cake and eat it too, Friends wants to shove the cake in your face, which means that you still get to eat your cake, just in a somewhat unconventional way.
The strongest case for why Friends is the better film is the ending. While Strings has the traditional “now we are in love and are going to be together forever” denouement, Friends ends with a more complicated message. Dylan and Jamie acknowledge that they are not perfect, that they have not magically overcome their character flaws over the last 90 minutes, and that they are, in general, both pretty screwed up. The ending is not them deciding to live happily ever after, but rather that they are going to remain friends, and if that leads to more sexy times, or to a relationship, so be it.
It is not the simple, straightforward solution that most rom-coms deliver with a bow, and the message is that in a society where people have sex without being in a relationship, it is much more difficult to have simple answers to complicated questions. In that respect Friends is far more modern than Strings, because it acknowledges that the old formula doesn't really work anymore. If Friends with Benefits is not great, it is at least speaking honestly to its audience, which is far more than can be said of No Strings Attached.