CHRIS HEWITT Knight Ridder Newspapers | Posted: Thursday, January 5, 2006 12:00 am
Anna Faris' portrait of an idiot pop star in "Just Friends" is absolutely, positively not ripping on Ashlee Simpson. Yeah, right.
Faris, who said she absolutely, positively was not doing a devastating caricature of Cameron Diaz in "Lost in Translation," nails another mean parody in "Just Friends." She plays a singer who cannot stay on key, cannot stop fondling her own peroxide-damaged hair, cannot deal with real people and cannot stay focused on any topic unless it's herself. Oh, Faris namechecks Simpson (and her sister) to make sure it's legally clear she's not doing Ashlee, but methinks the dimwit doth protest too much.
If only the movie were about her. Instead, she's on the sidelines while "Just Friends" focuses on the "Shallow Hal"-ish tale of a guy who was heavy in high school and has returned, buff and successful, to take another crack at the girl who wanted to be just friends 10 years earlier.
He's played by Ryan Reynolds, who turns his Jim Carrey knob up to 11, trying to get laughs out of a character who's a creep one minute and a sweetie pie the next because the only way "Just Friends" can whip up any suspense about whether he'll get the girl is by making us wonder whether he deserves to.
The genial Reynolds isn't terribly funny here, but he is terribly bruised. I guess that means he also channels Ben Stiller, since most of the movie's humor involves placing him in humiliating or painful situations and letting the contusions fly. That's worth some laughs but not nearly as many as the movie thinks.