There are only so many situations where Ryan Reynolds is funny. "Van Wilder," for example, was comedic gold — he felt like a strange amalgamation of Chevy Chase and Jason Lee, easily charming the pants off audiences. He was passable in "Blade: Trinity," as the wisecracking vampire hunter. And I'd venture to guess he's going to get a few laughs when he stars in not one, but two movies alongside The Rock. "Just Friends," however, is not one of these situations.
The film tells the lovely tale of Chris Brander (Reynolds) as he lusts for his best friend in high school, Jamie Palamino (Amy Smart, "Starsky & Hutch"). Chris looks a bit like Will Ferrell, plus a hundred pounds or so — making him the butt of almost everyone's jokes. He tries to profess his undying love to Jamie at her end-of-high school party, only to shockingly be humiliated by a star football player. Boy, couldn't see that one coming.
Fast-forward a few years into the future and the audience again meets Chris, now slimmed-down and looking more like the Reynolds everyone knows and loves. He tries to exude some sort of trendy coolness, but comes off as a smarmy, womanizing douchebag with an unbelievably annoying voice — almost like Van Wilder gone horribly wrong. After being relegated to baby-sitting pop star Samantha James (Anna Faris, "Scary Movie 3"), some sort of Paris Hilton/Ashlee Simpson combination, Chris winds up accidentally going home and confronting his haunted past.
As fate would have it, Chris goes to a local dive bar, where he coincidentally runs into Jamie. He hatches a half-baked plan to seduce and humiliate the girl who put him in the "friend-zone" so many years ago, but ends up realizing he still has feelings for her. Throw in another high school geek-gone-chic who wants to bang Jamie, in the form of Dusty (Chris Klein, "We Were Soldiers"), and you can do the math.
As is apparent from the above, convoluted recap, this movie's plot is a bit contrived. The characters feel quite transparent, lacking any depth or truly differentiating quirks. Sure, Reynolds is the ex-fat kid who refuses to eat anything remotely bad for him and has some strange womanizing complex. But that alone doesn't really create a character, at least in modern cinema. Audience members never get to see the whole picture of any of the main players in the film, only brief glimpses.
Typically, Reynolds shines in roles like this — the fast-talking charmer who is consistently his own foil. But it feels like director Roger Kumble ("The Sweetest Thing") has put a muzzle on Reynolds in this film. There are bits of humor here and there, but more than anything it seems like Reynolds is just going through the paces and collecting his paycheck, never displaying his typically charismatic persona.
The relationship between Chris and his younger brother Mike (Chris Marquette, "The Girl Next Door") is easily the movie's high point. The incredibly violent, yet somehow still loving exchanges the two have throughout the film present perhaps the most spot-on depiction of "brotherly love" seen in recent memory. The way the two can go from choking one another to lovingly offering one another Christmas cookies somehow provides "Just Friends" with some of its biggest laughs, though at times if feels like Kumble never intended for it. He makes it painfully obvious to viewers what he feels they should be laughing at, with most major jokes followed up with blatant hamming or Chris Klein throwing up the rock symbol with hand and sticking out his tongue. Kumble's prodding the audience to laugh may be the biggest turnoff; all the intentionally comic parts of "Just Friends" end up being more annoying than anything else.
That's not to say there aren't some funny moments in "Just Friends." Faris' psychotic diva provides plenty of laughs, whether she's eating a tube of toothpaste or playing her latest songs on an acoustic guitar (think Phoebe from "Friends"). To its credit, the movie tries to poke fun at "The Notebook" (an overrated tear-jerker if there ever was one) in several scenes, but is largely unsuccessful in doing so. A lot of times it feels as though jokes have a lot of potential, but Kumble instead chooses to beat viewers over the head with the fact that it should be funny rather than just letting the jokes speak for themselves.
It's hard to tell where "Just Friends" really went wrong. When a movie fails on so many levels, maybe it's best to just say it's bad and be done with it. Whether Kumble didn't fully realize the potential of his arguably talented cast or some of them just phoned in their performances doesn't really matter — the movie is a clunker either way.
Grade: D
