Kitch's Top 5 Christmas Movie Countdown - #4 Just Friends

Released: November 23, 2005

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Amy Smart, Anna Faris & Chris Klein

Director: Roger Kumble

Producer: Chris Bender

Writer: Adam ‘Tex’ Davis

Music By: Jeff Cardoni

From Roger Kumble, the director of Cruel Intentions, comes Just Friends. Probably the Ryan Reynolds film you haven’t heard about – I discovered it almost by accident in a bargain bin at JB HiFi a few years ago, and for $7.99 with Ryan Reynolds and the gorgeous Amy Smart, I figured I really couldn’t go wrong.

Little did I know that it would become one of my all-time favourites. As you can see above, there isn’t much on the front cover to indicate that this is a Christmas movie, but watch and you’ll see.

In the film’s prologue, set in New Jersey in 1995, Chris Brander (Reynolds) is heavily obese and socially awkward, and when he tries to tell his best friend, Jamie Palamino (Smart) that he’s in love with her by way of a high school yearbook, it ends terribly, and after uttering a Springsteen line – It's a town full of losers, and I'm pulling out of here to win – he leaves for parts unknown.

Fast forward a decade, and Chris is a hot-shot womanising music executive living in Los Angeles, and it emerges that he hasn’t once been home to New Jersey since the night things went downhill with Jamie.

In the days leading up to Christmas, Chris is asked to accompany a pop star – surely a not-so-subtle nod to someone like Paris Hilton – named Samantha James (a hilarious Anna Faris) over to Paris. She’s very high on her own talents, self-obsessed, and possesses a singing voice to make you screech. Worse, she’s developed a thing for Chris, though it’s not reciprocated in any way.

An issue on the plane, caused by Samantha, means that they must make an emergency landing – surprise, surprise – in Chris’s home town (Regina and Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan, Canada replace the swamps of Jersey) just in time for the holidays. And bad weather means that they’re stuck in town, so Chris reluctantly reconnects with old friends and adversaries, whilst trying to keep his younger brother, Mike (Christopher Marquette, who is awesome) away from Samantha. He is a giant fan, with posters of the pop starlet plastering his bedroom wall. The scenes between the self-absorbed Faris and the very-obsessed Marquette are some of the best in the movie.

Of course, Chris runs into Jamie, who is now a school teacher, and after trying to impress her with his lifestyle and a rental Porsche, she seems drawn to Dusty Dinkleman (Klein), who is a paramedic and, in high school, was also in love with Jamie. As if that isn’t enough, Samantha decides that Jamie is a rival for Chris’s affections, and does whatever she can to push Jamie to the sideline, and Dusty is trying to do the same to Chris. The Christmas pageant and hockey scenes are particularly hilarious.

Granted, the plot line is a little formulaic, but Ryan Reynolds is such a charismatic actor, and he makes the film more entertaining than it might’ve been with someone else cast in the lead role. Watching his character grapple with the ghosts of his past is pretty amusing. Christopher Marquette nearly steals the show, and the profile of Small Town USA is quite true. The cool guys in high school are never, ever the cool guys a decade or so later.

You might have to look hard to find this film in your local DVD store, but it’s worth the effort!