In the summer of 2011 I saw Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis in the romantic comedy “Friends with Benefits”, in my opinion a superior example of the genre. Unfortunately, the pair was somewhat mismatched, as Kunis was a far more assured presence than Timberlake. Perhaps it would have made more sense if he had performed in that other RomCom of the same summer — “No Strings Attached”.
Yet to give the leading man his due, Justin Timberlake is a man of many hats. Yesterday a friend told me that the former ‘N Sync member had purchased MySpace. I then found out on-line that he had bought it for $35 million, a bargain when you consider that MySpace went for $580 million back in 2005.
If you saw “The Social Network” you may already associate Timberlake with social networking, since he played Sean Parker of Napster in 2010 with far more conviction and panache than he was able to bring to the RomCom genre the following year.
But when my friend told me this news, my first thought was of Timberlake’s recent foray into romantic comedy, and I wondered whether, as the company’s new owner, he could rebrand his acquisition as a site for meeting potential romantic partners on-line.
“Maybe,” I told her “he can call it ‘Friending with Benefits'”.