Just Friends (2005)

Elevator Pitch: Chubby Chris Brander fancies his best friend Jamie Palamino but although she likes him his romantic feelings are not reciprocated. After an embarrassing  college graduation party he leaves, he says, for good. Ten years later he has shed the fat, and is a sleek record producer in LA, making a fortune, one of his brief romantic dalliances being with a singer who his boss has told him to bring in. The singer,  Samantha who, it turns out, can’t sing, claims all of Chris’s time. When her private jet catches fire they are forced to land in New Jersey, Chris has to take her home. So in the snowy streets of his hometown he has to somehow get rid of Samantha, and once more attempt to romance Jamie who is working in a local bar. Will be be successful?

Content: There is no nudity, but some dirty talk. Chris’s younger brother admits to Samantha that he masturbates daily stimulated by a poster of her only wearing whipped cream. She is impressed. We see Samantha singing badly and her grappling with Chris. He shrugs her off and goes out sometimes with Jamie, but things always go wrong. There are a lot of pratfalls. Chris makes a fool of himself playing ice hockey. Jamie’s parents illuminate their house for Christmas only to have Samantha accidentally drag the fairy lights away on the back of Chris’s brother’s car. You get the idea.

A View: I liked a lot of the ideas in this movie. The one of a young woman who is big on social networks but can’t actually sing and composes bad songs is great. But starting with quite good ideas, and charismatic stars, this outing was turned into a poor Animal House comedy. I am also often irritated by the presentations of perfect teeth in modern films, in this one Ryan Reynolds still displays perfect dentures even after being hit in the mouth with an ice hockey puck. So, somehow this quite viable idea was turned into a disaster, and I would not recommend that it be watched even for nothing.

Additional info: Anna Faris, as Samantha, apparently constantly drank Red Bulls to keep up her aggressive and hysterical persona.