 A running conceit in the new romantic comedy Friends With Benefits is that Dylan (Justin Timberlake) and Jamie (Mila Kunis) think romantic comedies are stupid. The latest, and most charming, of a string of no-strings-attached spins on the rom-com, Friends with Benefits even features a pretend movie within the movie, starring (in uncredited cameos) a fat Jason Segel and a deliberately insipid Rashida Jones, exemplifying exactly the kind of saccharine love story that Friends with Benefits is trying to be better than yet still provides the inspiration for the climax. They have raunchy, frank conversations about sex, and though there are more carefully tangled sheets in this movie than in any normal bedroom, the imperfect but steadily improving sex they have is about as close to realistic as a Hollywood romantic comedy ever gets.
– Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis may not break any new ground in Friends With Benefits, but critics are largely giving the sex-filled rom-com the thumbs up: "The jokes don't all work and the topical references can be irritably hipper-than-thou," writes Andrea Gronvall of the Chicago Reader. "But at least director and cowriter Will Gluck (Easy A) aims high." Time's Mary Pols writes, "It is elevated by energetic dialogue, the sexual chemistry between the leads and the fact that the miscommunication that keeps bliss at bay— there's always one in a rom-com, and usually it is annoyingly unbelievable—is plausible." "Friends With Benefits isn't nearly as original as it pretends to be," writes Elizabeth Weitzman of the New York Daily News. "But it's cute and funny and sweet, which—as any woman can attest—puts it way ahead of most Friday night options. But it's not just cute: it's sex-filled, notes Juliet Lapidos for Slate. "There's a lot of sex (fun sex, not weepy sex), and lots of talk about sex." But "aside from the heavy cursing and the shots of Timberlake's bare bottom in fairly graphic sex scenes—you see him clench—Friends With Benefits" is pretty generic in terms of rom-coms.