Friends With Benefits" is one of those American movies with a title whose nuance is lost entirely in the translation; local distributor Sony didn't even try, titling it "Stay Friends" for the Japan market. "Sekkusu Furendo" might have been more on the mark, but was presumably a bit too blunt for those expecting a light romantic comedy with a contrived meeting between Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis.
Yet "Friends With Benefits" is about nothing if not sekkusu furendo-ship. The film poses the notion that all the joy goes out of a good male-female friendship when it becomes a relationship, with all the heavy baggage that comes with commitment. Wouldn't it be nice if, just once, you could have the low-drama steadiness of a close friend, but with steamy scrumping on the side?
You can be sure that the boomers who came of age during the Free Love 1960s are now grinning sagely and muttering "Good luck with that!" But hope springs eternal, and Timberlake and Kunis embark upon their own personal quest for what feminist author Erica Jong once called the "zipless f-ck", an "absolutely pure" sexual encounter "free of ulterior motives." (She also mentioned it was even rarer than unicorns.)