Just Friends

Ryan Reynolds is a decent comic actor in search of a decent vehicle. He gets his best yet with this alternately sweet and nasty look at high-school love and its effect on adulthood. The film’s prologue has Reynolds in 1995 as an overweight kid who wants to tell his best friend (Amy Smart) that he loves her. He’s publicly humiliated, and then the film jumps 10 years ahead, to when the fat kid has become a trim lady-killer record executive. Circumstances bring him back home, where he tries again to woo his high-school love and reverts to his wimpy ways. Reynolds is very funny in the fat suit. His rendition of “I Swear” in front of a mirror is masterful. Smart is adorable, as usual, and Anna Faris is total insanity as a Paris Hilton-type pinup girl who aspires to be a recording star. A good piece of fluffy entertainment.