There are many movies with fine casts that fail because the script was mauled somewhere along the way. Friends with Benefits pulls off the rarer "this would have been a much better film if they had better actors as the leads."
I didn't look at the Netflix description, and so didn't recognize the leads. I spent the first half of the movie thinking that the male lead was a bastard crossing of Matt Morrison and Neil Patrick Harris who spent a lot of time in the gym, then finally gave up and looked at the IMDB. Oh, so that's what the agent of the introduction of "wardrobe malfunction" into the English lexicon looks like at 30. Sarahmac bested me by honestly asking who Justin Timberlake was. Touché. In any case, he has little on-screen charisma and we liked the guy who was awful as Green Lantern better.
Once we identified Mila Kunis, well, she's a slightly different story. We liked her in Black Swan; she's not actually a bad actress, so this is more a problem of her not being right for this part. We need someone with more NYC cred, but I'm blanking on anyone in the right age range. Maybe Blake Lively, or maybe I'm just wishing she weren't also in the awful Green Lantern movie.
(backdated to 12/8 when this was mostly written, but finally posted on 1/24/2012)
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