I always love when there's a Hollywood Premise Battle - when two almost identical films hit the theaters and we get to see which take does better. The biggest one I can remember recently was Armageddon vs. the now forgotten Deep Impact and recently there were dueling Mall Cop movies with Paul Blart and Observe & Report. So which Friends Hook Up But Promise Not to Fall in Love movie will succeed? Who knows why they happen? Blart and Report were just a case of coincidence. Other times,I feel like execs like a premise of a project but not the actual project itself so they pass and start their own... only to have the project they passed on land at another studio. (In this case, perhaps one studio saw the short for No Strings Attached and started developing a similar movie while another actually bought the rights to No Strings Attached.) In this case, I could just see this as coincidence since my guess is that there are probably around 1000 hook up with a friend scripts floating around Hollywood and even more in collegiate screenwriting classes. Not to mention that just last year there was an indie film called "Friends (with Benefits)". In fact, there were probably a few indie flicks out there with this premise. But I digress...

Here's "Friends with Benefits":

Here's No Strings Attached

I've been down on Ashton Kutcher's film career but I didn't mind him in this trailer. I think he's best off when playing a goof ball. I don't mind him in those roles but find him to be completely unlikeable when he tries to act smooth ala Killers or Spread. I'll also take Natalie Portman over Mila Kunis (but would gladly take them both in Black Swan) and prefer the angle of having the guy being the one who starts to fall in love. Although I would have gone a step further and had one of the friends support him, exclaiming that he's got a great girl and needs to lock that down. I mean, seriously, how many 30 year old guys date someone as beautiful as Natalie Portman and seemingly as cool and successful as her character is yet their friends are like, "Dude, you should totally keep playing the field." Also, I'd just prefer a comedy in which the friends weren't so stereotypical - the desperate-for-love girlfriend, the chauvinist guy.

In terms of directors, Ivan Reitman is the comedic heavyweight here but it's been 17 years since he's made a movie that I've liked and his only two movies this century were Evolution and My Super Ex-Girlfriend. Will Gluck, on the other hand, wrote and directed Friends with Benefits and he is coming off two of my favorite recent guilty pleasures: Fired Up! and Easy A. (On a related note, while I don't have a problem with it, it seems like the new cliche is the Super Cool/With It parents. It worked well in Gluck's Easy A but I'm afraid that it might start to wear thin. It's also interesting to see Patricia Clarkson consistently letting it loose, as if she had been waiting to do more comedy and SNL's "Mother Lover" suddenly opened new doors for her.)

Honestly, it's a tough call but right now, I'm going to side with Gluck and roll with Friends with Benefits although No Strings Attached is nipping at its heels. Granted, they both seem like rentals or movies I wouldn't catch until they land on HBO but you never know...