There’s a point in Roger Kumble’s vicious comedy where Chris (Ryan Reynolds) explains the ‘friend-zone’. “Once a girl decides you’re her friend,” he says, “it’s game over. In her eyes you’re like a brother. Or a lamp.” Having spent his small-town adolescence in Jamie Palamino’s friend-zone, love-sick Chris decides that too much is enough and leaves town to reinvent himself. Gone is the overweight, All-4-One miming geek of old, say hello to Chris the major Hollywood player and womaniser.

In Just Friends, Kumble (Cruel Intentions) presents an unexpected treat. The anticipated sitcom-droll romantic-comedy is replaced by a sharp, brutal and frankly hilarious film that takes its cues from the most physical screwball knockdown and cranks up the heat. This is not a film for the faint of heart. When Chris unexpectedly finds himself home for the holidays and shackled to an insane starlet (Anna Farris), a nouveau Hilton with pretensions of Madonna (circa ‘93), he also finds himself back in Jamie’s zone. A little older but no wiser, he plans to win her affection but finds his nemesis in Dusty, former geek, now unbearably talented guitarist/singer/medic (Chris Klein).

Kumble works from a dense script peppered with obscene characters, situations and observations steeped in a warped yet spookily familiar reality. It’s the same approach that makes The Simpsons what it is. Reynolds (Van Wilder) anchors this brazen film with a turn that distils the best of Will Ferrell and Jim Carey, while Farris returns fire with a scene-stealing presence that borders on the truly disturbed. Kumble keeps the laughs coming with a story that gets funnier and nastier until finally the lessons are learned. A word of caution, sometimes it’s ok to be a lamp.

 // COLIN FRASER