Just Friends Reviews
Top Critic
Just Friends is part Farrelly Brothers and part Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, all wrapped together to deliver gross-out gags in bizarrely random and rapid-fire fashion, with zero intent to develop sustainable plot or character.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Just Friends hangs its crude, clobbering sense of humor on a dubious theory.
| Original Score: 2/5
... while the ending might be a foregone conclusion, getting there involves just enough slapstick manful idiocy to keep the humor moving at a clip.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
A barbed romantic comedy with a distinct debt to the Farrelly brothers' gross-out-plus-sentimentality formula, Just Friends is a welcome antidote to the usual seasonal sweetness.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
In all, it's not too bad and it's not too long, and any movie that sets Santa on fire is okay by me.
After peaking with the unsurpassable glories of 2003's Bad Santa, the humbug holiday genre may be getting run into the ground.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
An uneven black comedy that fails to sell its coldhearted, central premise, Just Friends finds actor Ryan Reynolds in his most tedious turn yet as a theoretically likable reprobate.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
It's a thoroughly enjoyable three- or four-gimmick comedy, highlighted by a whorish dimwit pop star played by Anna Faris.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
After watching a movie like Just Friends, I hurry home from the theater and take a shower so I can wash away the stink of the experience.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Thanks to director Roger Kumble's breathless pacing, Just Friends manages to outrun most of its flaws.
| Original Score: 2.5/4
As romantic comedies go, Just Friends is just a lunch date. And everybody knows there's no kiss at the end of a lunch date.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Just Friends is funnier the sillier it gets, perhaps hitting a crescendo during the slap fights between the brothers, who begin beating each other with regularity, as if they'd never stopped.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
With its slapstick car wrecks and sports injuries, the movie is like a Michael Bay take on Garden State. It wants to be painfully funny, but it really is just plain painful to watch.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Just Friends shows that a lifeless idea can rise up out of its script crypt and put a stranglehold on 2,000-plus screens.
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Every holiday season welcomes a big-screen turkey, and this one's got extra stuffing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
This is superficial entertainment to say the least. But if you're looking for laughs, then Just Friends is just fine.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
There have been worse premises for a romantic comedy, but director Roger Kumble and writer Adam "Tex" Davis could scarcely have done a worse job developing it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/5
[A] cheerily clean and notably bright teen comedy.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
Think of Just Friends as this season's answer to last year's Surviving Christmas, making you wonder what you did to deserve more movie coal in your stocking.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
The movie too often withers under a barrage of predictable gags, which are doled out in uneven slices.
| Original Score: C
The best scenes in Just Friends take place offscreen.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Just Friends is funnier than any low-rent rip-off of There's Something About Mary has a right to be.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
During the credits, Reynolds is again shown in the fat suit while singing a power ballad, reminding us all how funny Just Friends could have been.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Even with young talent, director Roger Kumble and writer Adam Davis rely way too heavily (no pun intended) on the fat-suit joke and titular impasse.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
A refreshingly mean-spirited breeze through both the holiday movie and romantic-comedy checklists (including the third-act heart of gold).
A surprisingly shrewd and energetic romantic comedy.
Characters switch personalities in midscene, forget slights, ignore the obvious, abandon goals and betray family and friends just because the script demands it. No motivation required.
