Sex in the city in 'Friends With Benefits'

Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis make a relentlessly hip, ostentatiously metropolitan couple in "Friends With Benefits," a movie so desperate to court the youth market that it might as well hand out premium vodkatinis at screenings. It's not without laughs or charm, but its focus seems to be more on product placement and cultural cool.

Timberlake, so engaging in "The Social Network," has little to work with as Dylan, another Internet entrepreneur who runs a Gawker-esque website in Los Angeles. Recently dumped (Emma Stone plays the girlfriend), Dylan travels to New York to meet Jamie (Kunis), a headhunter hoping to place him at GQ magazine. Its logo appears frequently after Dylan takes the job.

Kunis introduces Dylan to the Brooklyn Bridge, cool clubs, snowboarder Shaun White (an odd, ungettable joke) and flash mobs. Dylan and Jamie become friends, but soon these confident, successful hotties jump into the sack. They swear -- using a "Bible app" on a tablet computer -- to keep it purely physical. In other words, to borrow a recently used film title, "No Strings Attached."

The funniest jokes are unprintable (the movie works hard for its R rating), and most hinge on hyper-current pop references like Harry Potter, John Mayer and Axe Body Spray. Jason Segel and Rashida Jones appear in a romcom-within-the-romcom, a clever idea; conversely, Woody Harrelson's macho homosexual is a limited gag. Patricia Clarkson, as Jamie's flaky mother, gets the best line when she walks in on the casual couple.

Timberlake and Kunis bare their bodies and tussle gamely in bed, but co-writer and director Will Gluck (last year's far better "Easy A") can't find the chemistry between them. No matter -- their brand names will surely sell the movie.