Friends With Benefits and No Strings Attached are underrated rom-coms

In 2011 two similar romantic comedies about friends who start hooking up and then fall in love opened six months apart: No Strings Attached on January 21, starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, and Friends with Benefits on July 22, starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake.

Each film even features a That '70s Show alum, and those actors — Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis — later became a real-life couple, marrying in 2015. The movies fared almost identically at the box office, with Friends with Benefits grossing $149.5 million worldwide to No Strings Attached's $149.2 million, and their runtimes are nearly the same: 109 minutes versus 108 minutes.

Friends with Benefits benefits from leads who are more charismatic and bounce off one another; Jamie (Mila Kunis) and Dylan (Justin Timberlake) come across as true friends, and their banter often lands. By contrast Emma (Natalie Portman) and Adam (Ashton Kutcher) never quite gel as partners or as friends, and Portman doesn’t fully sell the raunchier elements of her role.

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