Just Friends DVD Review:

After National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, Ryan Reynolds became a name. Suddenly he had all sorts of options, and he made a few choices that took him in a completely new direction. He tried his luck at more dramatic roles, with moderate success, but after a break from comedy he decided to return with full force this past year. 2005 had two comedies starring Reynolds, oddly both were supported by Anna Faris as well. Just Friends makes use of Reynolds slapstick, double take, and spit take abilities, but by the end of the film it gets old no matter how good he performs.

Reynolds is yet another comedic actor to put on the fat suit for laughs, and once again it proves an easy way for cheap laughs. He is Chris Brander, an overweight geek who just happens to have the most popular girl in school, Jamie Palamino (Amy Smart), as his best friend. He is also secretly in love with her and decides to confess his love when he signs her yearbook at the end of their senior year, but his attempts are thwarted by all of Jamie’s popular friends who ridicule him until he runs off insisting that he will show them all. Ten years later Chris is a successful music executive that has no problem with women, and he is given the task of making a new pop star (Anna Faris) happy. When their flight is grounded in New Jersey, Chris’s home town, he is given the opportunity to woo Jamie as an attractive and successful lady killer.

Films where everything goes wrong for the main character are difficult to watch until you remember that everything will work out fine for them in the end. Just Friends is no exception, and although we see Chris beaten and embarrassed around every corner, we also know that it will work out for him in the end. Even when Chris Klein shows up playing his guitar there is nothing really at stake for anyone who has seen a few of these films.

This was definitely the year for comedy, even if this film isn’t one of the better films. The fact that Reynolds has returned to comedy is a gift enough for now, but in the next few years I would love to see him attached to a more deserving script. This year had some great comedies that took me by surprise, but nothing about Just Friends is at all surprising. Anna Faris and Ryan Reynolds work great together, and should be paired up again, but lets hope it is with a script that goes in a completely different direction than both of the films they just starred in.

Fat suit included, Just Friends goes to the extreme of everything. Not only is Chris in shape after ten years, but he is also rich and semi-famous. When Chris begins to make a fool out of himself upon returning, he even manages to destroy Christmas somehow. There are no subtleties in the script or the humor. Faris and Reynolds commit themselves to the comedy completely, which almost makes it completely absurd to watch.

The DVD for Just Friends features a number of fun bonuses, which are surprisingly mostly relevant to the film instead of just being filler features. As popular as it is to have special features these days, many films cram as many things onto the DVD as possible, even if they don’t fit with the mood of the film (I don’t need a blooper reel for a drama). Just Friends has a decent amount of features, but almost all of them are a great supplement to the film.

One of the most creative special features is a music video for the song that Chris Klein sings in the film. Some of the footage used in the video is just blooper footage, but they went through great lengths to film footage specifically for the music video that seems like it would have been good to have playing during the credits. There is also a gag reel and deleted scenes, but they aren’t as funny as the music video. The Behind the Scenes footage has a number of funny bits, including stories from cast and crew about the friend zone. Some of the other featurettes actually deal with the making of the film as well. There are even featurettes about the fat suit and the body shake. Most of the featurettes are short and simple, so even when they aren’t good at least they don’t last. The last special feature is a commentary track by the director and the producers. Many of these guys were friends beforehand and they get along quite well on the commentary track as well, which keeps things lively.



Ryan Izay