Double Bill Mini Musings: Benefitting and Broadcasting...

Friends With Benefits:
What's it about?
From Will Gluck, director of the brilliant Easy A, comes this moderately raunchier tale of two friends in New York, both recently out of long-term relationships and with their own batch of personal hang-ups, who decide to skip the complications of being in a relationship and go straight for the sex part. Naturally, being a romantic comedy, things don't stay that way for long.
Who would I recognise in it?
Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis, Woody Harrelson, and a bunch of other folk.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Simultaneously subverting, and conforming to, the various tropes of the romantic comedy sub-genre, FWB treads a sometimes unsteady line between ironic send-up and schmaltzy familiarity. Fortunately, on the fairly consistent strength of the script, and good chemistry between the two leads (with a chucklesome, but underused, supporting role from Harrelson as a matcho sports writer who happens to be gay), you can forgive the film for following some predictable paths at times and reaching a conclusion you saw coming from a dozen movies of it's kind before it. Decidedly better than the standard romcom fare by a county mile - the added wit provides a welcome spice to a sub-genre that is too often underwritten, and burdening the shoulders of actors who could be doing far better work elsewhere. FWB, with it's sparky yet friendly combination of the familiar with the cheekily sly, ends up being solid - good.

Click "READ MORE" below for Broadcast News...

Broadcast News:
What's it about?
Written, Produced, and Directed by James L. Brooks, Broadcast News follows three professionals (a producer, presenter, and reporter) in the world of television news just before the dams broke, and a torrent of fakery and opinion drowned the format.
Who would I recognise in it?
Holly Hunter, Albert Brooks, William Hurt, Jack Nicholson and some other familiar faces.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Combining gentle comedy with gentle drama, it takes a while to get going - but the time is spent subtly introducing you to the main characters (whom we all see at succinctly characterising moments in their childhoods at the very beginning of the film), so that you actually care about them. It's in no rush to push you in any particular direction - which somewhat wrong-foots you 25 years after its original release, where you'd expect an approach to such a story more akin to the breezy-but-slight Morning Glory (also set in the world of TV news) - but the gradual manoeuvring and peppered moments of character-defining traits (such as Hunter's daily scheduled weeping), warms you, even if the movie doesn't always go for the boiling point. Good.