Friends With Benefits

Can two consenting adults do the dirty without emotion getting in the way? Ask your average Premiership footballer or career politician and the answer will most likely be a resounding yes.

In the world of the Hollywood rom-com, though, love has a nasty habit of interfering with the best laid plans. So it proves in Friends with Benefits, a risqué romp that ends up reinforcing the very conventions it seeks to overturn.

That doesn't prevent it being a fun and feisty frolic that benefits hugely from the sassy interplay between Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, neither of whom are hard on the eyes exactly. But it does stop it being the genre game changer it evidently wants to be, for all director Will Gluck's striving in that direction.

Fans of bright young things copping off on camera will doubtless be familiar with No Strings Attached, in which Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman decided to base their relationship on casual sex alone. Friends with Benefits is essentially the same movie, albeit with a few elements that never quite made it into Ivan Reitman's film: namely charm, witty one-liners and a male lead you don't immediately want to punch.