Samantha James

"I'm Samantha James, bitch!"

- Samantha James

Samantha James was the main antagonist of the 2005 romantic comedy Just Friends. She was portrayed by Anna Faris.

Samantha is a sexy and successful, but highly untalented and stupid pop singer/songwriter who also plays guitar. Her only praised success is her work as a model, an occupation she excells in due to her sex appeal. Her guitar playing is passable at best, she is able to write her own songs which are relatively good and in almost all of her modeling photos she is either at least half naked or wearing very tight clothes. While not exactly evil, she is extremely selfish, vain, spoiled and obnoxious. All she is interested in is becoming a rich and famous artist and seducing her producer Chris Brander on whom she has a possesive and demanding crush. Typical for a rom-com villain she is also funny and accident prone.

Role in film
Samantha is first seen using a commercial for world hunger to promote herself. Chris Brander's boss sends him to find and sign Samantha a deal with them as her modeling poster is the best selling one in the country. It is evident as soon as Chris arrives at a studio where Samantha is recording a new song that she is a terrible singer, a flaw that she does not notice and blames on other people. Samantha agreed to go with Chris to Paris to sign the deal but on the way her private jet crashed in Chris' old home town, New Jersey. Being forced to stay there until the plane got fixed, Chris and Samantha crahed in Chris' old house with Chirs family. While Samantha tried to entertain herself, which she found difficult in a suburban house after abusing the playboy lifestyle, Chris snuck off to woo his high school sweetheart, a fact he kept secret as his job relied on Samantha's coperation.

The only four times Samantha left the house all turned out rather unleasent.

1: She made a scene in a tavern and accidentally kissed a lady on the lips.

2: Mike, Chris' yonger brother, accidentally hit her with her taser, causing her to fall off the level of a mall and hit her head, resulting in her consuming so much vicodin she became rather crazy.

3: A member of the crowd at the club she was singing at threw something at her so Samantha violently attacked him.

4: Out of spite, Samantha destroyed a Christmas party that Chris had snuck off to in order to woo his true love.

Samantha is last seen, again, harrassing and attempting to get Chris into bed but he leaves her lying on his living room floor. Her fate is left ambiguous but since Chris ends up with his one true love in New Jersey, Samantha presumably continues her normal Pop-Music life in Hollywood.

Personality
Due to her extreme sexual beauty and overindulgence in her privileged life style, Samantha is completley devoid of humility and is very arrogant, egocentric, boorish, crude and self-obsessed. She does not think of herself as a bad mannered person, instead beliving that everyone loves her, going so far as to actually thinking that people in a bar were staring at her because she was famous even though no one was.

Samantha has an obvious crush on Chris and is very overbearing and insistant of his affection, a trait she does not realize is unreturned. Samantha was rather abusive of Chris, she insulted, kissed and groped him forcefully and in public on more than one ocassion, thinking it all good fun and ignoring Chris' protests. Despite her domineering grip on Chris, Samantha does genuinely care for him and enjoys his compony for more than just physical reasons but her bigheadedness is such that Chris just can not stand her, so Samantha really only has herself to blame for never winning Chris over.

The only person who likes Samantha as much as she does is Chris' eighteen year old, horndog of a brother Mike. Mike is Samantha's number 1 fan, has all of her posters decorating his bedroom and has an incredibly strong crush on her. Samantha was well aware of this (because Mike was foolish enough to openly tell her) and was not above exploiting him for personal gain. She implicated sex to him so he would give her a back rub and even though she had just complained about being sex-starved, was most likely lying though this was never found out as Chris cut the massage short. Later, when Chris had snuck off to be with his own crush, he intrusted Mike to keep the truth of his whereabouts from Samantha. Samantha, however, snuck up on Mike, trapped him in the bathroom and French kissed him passionately to sway him into giving up Chris' secret and, sordid though her action might have been, it worked like a charm.

Samantha's behaviour might possibly be due to psychosis, this is hinted at several times in the film and Chris has accused her of being crazy but the matter is never takcled head on.

Skills and Abilities
Samantha is capable of guitar playing and song writing to an adequate degree and succeeds greatly as a model, she seems to be pretty well off. Samantha's violent temper also makes her a good fighter, shown when she beat up a rude member of her audience and got in a fight with Chris' love, Jaime. She has good aim with her taser as she hit Chris directly in the crotch with it.

Samantha's most notible skill is how she uses her charisma and sensuality to secure good deals and jobs with the media, and how she manipulated Mike via flirting and physical pleasure.

Trivia

 * Samantha James is portrayed by Anna Faris who stared in the first four instalments of the Scary Movie franchise and was in other films such as My Super-Ex Girlfriend, House Bunny, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, May and Yogi Bear.
 * Anna Faris was nominated for three awards in this film: MTV Move Award for Best Kiss (With Christopher Marquette who played Mike), Teen Choice Award for Choice Hissy Fit and Teen Choice Award For Choice Liplock.
 * In an alternate ending for the film, Samantha is shown to have completley redeemed herself and is seen singing a beautiful song whilst playing its melody on a piano. This was cut due to film-makers prefering Samantha to retain her somewhat insane attitude, thinking it more subitable for a comedy.
 * She is the parody of the real-life dance-pop singer with the same name.