Just Friends

Reviewed by:
Pete Hammond

Every holiday season, the studios leave a big lump of shit in moviegoer stockings. Last season, we had Surviving Christmas. This season, it's Just Friends. Ryan Reynolds, using all of the overbearing comedic tricks he honed on ABC, plays a weight-challenged high school student (complete with fat suit) whose crush (Amy Smart) only sees him as a buddy. Years later, he’s a trimmed-down hotshot agent charged with turning a no-talent, Paris Hilton–type socialite (Anna Faris) into a pop singing superstar. (Regardless of the fact that her most memorable lyrics include gems like “mall people they come and go/ small people they just don’t know.”) When a plane malfunction forces them to land in his home state of New Jersey, Reynolds gets his second chance at the girl of his dreams. The one (and we mean one) genuinely funny moment comes when Reynolds, trying to impress Smart, is dragged to the tearjerker The Notebook even though he is warned by his friend, “Dude, The Notebook is so-o-o gay.” Other than that, what can you say about a film whose anthem is All-4-One’s treacly “I Swear”?