At first glance, Just Friends looks like a ripoff of the Gwyneth Paltrow comedy Shallow Hal. There's hunky Ryan Reynolds disguised in a fat suit.
People are making fun of the guy's weight and he's pining for affection while he's wolfing down ice cream sundaes.
The good news with Just Friends is that the whole fat suit thing is not just a gimmick.
It's an important plot point in this wildly funny slapstick comedy that also has a genuine heart.
Reynolds is Chris, a chubby high school senior who has a crush on Jamie (Amy Smart), the popular cheerleader.
Jamie likes Chris. She considers him her best friend, but she doesn't love him. She's too busy dating the school jocks.
Jamie has another admirer in Dusty (Chris Klein), a long-haired, pimply-faced wannabe folk singer whom she simply ignores.
The prom night party that opens the film is heartbreaking for poor Chris.
He pours out his heart in Jamie's yearbook only to have it end up in the hands of her current jock boyfriend, who broadcasts it to the whole party.
Worse still, Jamie makes Chris wear a T-shirt she designed for him trumpeting their friendship.
It just emphasizes his bulk and her attitude toward him.
Flash forward a decade.
A trimmed-down Chris is a top record producer and Dusty a hunky paramedic.
Jamie is still back home tending bar and taking classes to become a teacher.
A winter storm strands all three in New Jersey for Christmas. Once again, Chris and Dusty become rivals for Jamie's affections and the results are hilarious because they really are the same nerds, just in better bodies.
Reynolds is such a slick comedian. He can be so smarmy that it's great fun watching him become the object of laughter and ridicule.
This is as funny as anything Reynolds did in Van Wilder, the film that established him as a wild and crazy comedian.
There are some truly funny set pieces in Just Friends, including the havoc created at traditional Christmas parties.
It's the kind of side-splitting nonsense that has audiences roaring in appreciation.
Klein gets to be the villain of the piece as his intentions are not as noble as Chris's, and he carries it off with aplomb.
But Reynolds and Klein are upstaged by Anna Faris as Samantha James, a ditzy self-proclaimed singer. It's clear Faris is lampooning the likes of Ashlee and Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton and it's scathingly funny satire.
The best thing about Just Friends is that it never pretends to be anything other than a crass, unsophisticated youth comedy.
It prides itself in stooping to the lowest forms of nonsense to get its laughs, but it offers them up in truckloads.
(This film is rated PG)
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