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Just FriendsMike ClarkYou'd think comic actor Ryan Reynolds wouldn't show his face so soon after last month's top billing in the miserable restaurant farce Waiting ... And for a while in Just Friends, he doesn't - or at least not exactly. Reynolds spends the early and wobbliest parts of this high school aftermath farce encased in John Candy-jowls makeup to help establish his character as the prize dweeb of the senior class. Worse, he's in platonic hell with a class cutie played by Amy Smart, a sweetheart with a slight "tease" dimension. Flash-forward a decade, and the bulk of the movie deals with the now slimmer and womanizing Reynolds (a music exec) returning home to snowy New Jersey with a trampy no-talent rocker in tow. She (Anna Faris) is an ugly work assignment who keeps getting in the way as Reynolds tries to kindle (there's no "re" here) a relationship with Smart. The movie reminds me a little of 1991's Mystery Date in that the filmmakers have their twisted way of creating almost sick subsidiary characters and situations - all to offset a formulaic premise and low audience expectations. Still, there are some funny surprises, from skewering overdone Christmas decorations to casting Chris Klein as a creep. But after peaking with the unsurpassable glories of 2003's Bad Santa, the humbug holiday genre may be getting run into the ground.
Worse, he's in platonic hell with a class cutie played by Amy Smart, a sweetheart with a slight "tease" dimension. Flash-forward a decade, and the bulk of the movie deals with the now slimmer and womanizing Reynolds (a music exec) returning home to snowy New Jersey with a trampy no-talent rocker in tow. She (Anna Faris) is an ugly work assignment who keeps getting in the way as Reynolds tries to kindle (there's no "re" here) a relationship with Smart. The movie reminds me a little of 1991's Mystery Date in that the filmmakers have their twisted way of creating almost sick subsidiary characters and situations - all to offset a formulaic premise and low audience expectations. Still, there are some funny surprises, from skewering overdone Christmas decorations to casting Chris Klein as a creep. But after peaking with the unsurpassable glories of 2003's Bad Santa, the humbug holiday genre may be getting run into the ground.
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