FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS: a comedy that's cocky and crappy

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS is one of those irritating films that wants to have it's cake and eat it too.
It's a rom-com that spends its first half offering a snarky faux-cool 21st century take on the genre, mocking its cliches and tired conventions, and the second half exploiting almost all of them to the max.

Does director Will Gluck ('Easy A') not realise his film is falling into the very trap he professes to despise, or is he trying to make the point that the stereotypes of the traditional Hollywood rom-com actually reflect the reality of young love? Is he skilfully and amusingly telling us that rom coms peddle these cliches for a reason and the reason is 'cos they're true?! Or did he just run out of ideas?
Not being privy to the inner workings of Mr Gluck's mind or the endless development meetings which preceded shooting I can't say with certainty which of these possibilities is the correct one, but I can assert with a high degree of confidence that FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS is tedious, derivative and unengaging.
There's nothing to like about self-aware smart-aleks Dylan Harper (Justin Timberlake) and Jamie Rellis (Mila Kunis) as they play-out this tired storyline desperately trying to convince themselves and us that they're doing something fresh and new. Maybe they thought they were being ironic but that would require a level of sophistication this film simply doesn't possess. Timberlake and Kunis actually acquit themselves pretty well, but they're working with material that stinks.
I'm similarly at a loss to understand why Hollywood has gone on something of an anti-romantic comedy bender recently, inflicting on us not only FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS but also 'No Strings Attached' and 'What's Your Number,' each worse than the one before, and that's includes starting from a very low baseline.
If you set out to mock one of Hollywood's most cherished genres, one that has withstood world wars, the Great Depression, numerous recessions and enormous social and cultural upheavals, you better make damn sure you've got a story that is so absolutely brilliant in every respect that potential critics are stunned into awed silence. FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS is not that film.