Review: 'Just Friends' Just Another Formula Movie

'Just Friends' (PG-13) (out of four)

A sophomoric comedy that actually tries to show a little heart amid the punch lines, "Just Friends" is a comedy that presents us with the most unexpected paradox: Can a film that starts with the most impure of premises resolve itself as a sincere story of love and affection?

Parallels seem difficult to even imagine. What if a thriller about a hit man setting out to kill a person ended with them becoming the best of friends? Or what if a movie about a Roman gladiator became an art film about a soldier-turned-artist?

Neither of these ideas seems more bizarre than those of "Just Friends": A comedy that starts in one hemisphere and ends in another, first as a revenge comedy about the guy who wants to sleep with that high school girl who only wanted to be friends, and later as a sweet and wholesome comedy about timeless romance.

Huh?

Maybe it should come with a disclaimer to all those wistful college boys in the audience, home on break: Do not try as advertised.

Given this paradoxical theme, it's not surprising that "Just Friends" does not succeed. But then again, it doesn't entirely fail because it uses three of the most ironclad nostalgia formulas, all involving Chris (Ryan Reynolds) as the once-fat teenager who was mocked relentlessly in his youth and who has since grown up to be a successful and attractive super-agent in the music industry.

The first of the three formulas is that of the reinvented man -- a handsome Chris returning home to surprise the critics of his past. The second is the journey back home, where Chris embraces both nostalgia for his youth but also disgust for a place he has moved beyond and can no longer relate to. And finally, of course, there's the theme of reuniting with long-lost love, as Chris again finds Jamie (Amy Smart), the object of his childhood affections.

And tries to get her into bed.

While these three threads keep things moving at a brisk pace, the film is littered with side plots and distractions. The reason Chris ends up back home in the first place is that he is accompanying a shallow pop star, Samantha (Anna Faris), when her private jet must make an emergency landing. She likes Chris and keeps throwing herself at him. Pursuing Jamie, he finds he has competition from another former dork, Dusty (Chris Klein), who now is working as a paramedic and croons sweet nothings to Jamie while playing his guitar.

Yet every time Dusty or Samantha pokes their head into the film, the reality of Chris and Jamie's supposed romance is shattered. For Chris, you see, wants only to have casual sex and Dusty, as Chris describes him, is little more than a "Jersey player" who goes after any girl he can.

And when either Samantha or Dusty graces the screen, the same questions come to mind: If Chris is only concerned with sex, then why not just go for Samantha, and how can Chris be a good guy if indeed all he wants is precisely what Dusty wants? Isn't Chris just a "Jersey player" himself?

"Just Friends," despite its admirable attempts to be more than just an immature diversion is, by its very premise, an immature diversion. And while most films would be well advised to aim for loftier goals, "Just Friends" should have stuck to what it seems to know best: dirty jokes.

Some combinations work in the movies but other's don't, and "Just Friends" asks the impossible: for us to see the poet in the pervert, and the decency in the depraved. Movies like "Animal House" don't pretend their buffoonish heroes are saints. Chris, no matter what "Just Friends" may try to say, is not a nice guy.