Deborah Woehr

Yesterday, my sister-in-law and I decided to brave the Christmas Crunch and go out for a movie. She likes comedy and chick flicks, so we went to see Just Friends.

The movie was about this successful hotshot (Chris) who liked to womanize because he felt he’d been jilted by a girl he’d had a crush on in high school. Soon after the movie starts, we flash back to 1995, where he’s practically jacking off over the girl’s picture as he writes a confessional to her about wanting to be her boyfriend.

Flashing a bit forward, he is in her room, where she is practically falling all over him while a raging party is going on downstairs. Chris tries to tell her his feelings, but gets interrupted by the town jock and another dweeb named Dusty. Disaster strikes when the jock accidentally takes Chris’s yearbook instead of his own. I think everyone can imagine how that went.

Ten years later, he is still pining for that cheerleader and treating other women like shit. His record producer boss forces him to wow a blond psycho bimbo (Samantha James) so she’ll sign a record deal with their company. She decides to microwave her dinner with the foil on and succeeds in stranding them near his home town in New Jersey.

From there, the movie gets funny. Chris finds his sweetheart working at a bar and starts falling all over himself trying to impress her. The townsfolk won’t let up on him about his “fat” years, and he continually makes a fool of himself. When Dusty (see above) enters the picture, things really start going wrong for Chris.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie. It had some good messages about love and self-respect. The only thing I didn’t like was the make-up job on Chris. They made his face too fat in proportion to the rest of his body. The poor guy looked like he was suffering from a wisdom tooth extraction more than extra pounds. In the present time, they put too much eyeliner on, giving him somewhat of a cross-dresser look.