Sitcomish ‘Friends’ will bring a few laughs

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, November 22, 2005

It doesn’t reach the fractured highs of “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” but “Just Friends” does have a few scenes (and one wild performance) that provide more than the usual laughs from a smutty Hollywood comedy.

We begin in 1995, at a New Jersey high school, where Chris (Ryan Reynolds) and Jamie (Amy Smart) are truly best buds 4-ever. Chris is “big-boned” and shy, while Jamie is a pretty blond cheerleader, so their relationship remains platonic.

Of course this drives Chris crazy, so after a graduation day meltdown (including a mortifying public declaration of his real feelings for Jamie), he leaves Jersey for 10 years. He drops a lot of weight and develops a lounge-lizard patter – and at this point resembles the Ryan Reynolds beloved by college kids everywhere (Reynolds, the star of “Van Wilder” and “Blade: Trinity,” is the smirky Chevy Chase of the 21st century.)

Now a record executive, Chris has to babysit an old flame, Samantha (Anna Faris), a pop star diva with serious mood swings. They must stop over in Chris’ old hometown, Chris meets Jamie again for the first time in 10 years, and shenanigans ensue.

The movie mostly works sitcom ideas – Chris pretends to be more of a jerk than he is, then tries to do the opposite, all in an effort to impress Jamie, blah blah blah. There’s another former high school nerd, one Dusty Dinkleman (Chris Klein), a simpering folk singer whose skin has finallly cleared up. He’s after Jamie now too, and he has a nauseating song (“When Jamie Smiles”) to prove it.

“Just Friends” pinballs around in chaotic fashion, but the actors are energetic. Reynolds’ mutually abusive scenes with his younger brother (Christopher Marquette) are funny, Chris Klein (“American Pie”) has never been this good, and Reynolds manages a hilarious single-shot meltdown alone in his car.

But the movie is stolen by Anna Faris, the former local girl who played the lead in the “Scary Movie” pictures and did a kooky cameo in “Lost in Translation.” As the singer who resembles an unholy cross between Britney Spears and Courtney Love, Faris is by turns seductive, witchy and completely zonked out. She really lets it rip.

Director Roger Kumble (“Dangerous Intentions”) shows signs of ambition, but without fulfilling them. Kudos to the people who made Ryan Reynolds’ high school “fat suit,” easily the best in its line since Gwyneth Paltrow’s padding in “Shallow Hal.”