Review #2

NO STRINGS ATTACHED

 

Released: 2011

Director: Ivan Reitman

Starring: Natalie Portman & Ashton Kutcher

Grade: C+

Have you ever gone shopping with a friend who looks fantastic in everything but insists on complaining about how fat she looks? Watching No Strings Attached is kind of like that. The film centers around two impossibly attractive friends who have phenomenal sex and are generally perfect for each other and the only thing standing in the way of true happiness is their inability to commit. I understand that commitment can be a scary thing, it’s hard to get worked up about two characters we know are going to end up together. With romantic comedies, it’s not the destination that matters so much as the journey to get there- how the central relationship builds, how carefully the characters are fleshed out. While I can’t fault No Strings Attached for being predicable, I can fault it for being utterly boring.

Emma (Natalie Portman) and Adam (Ashton Kutcher) are two long-term acquaintances who become friends after sleeping together. For reasons that are only vaguely explained, Emma is “allergic” to anything romantic and prefers her self-sufficient isolation to commitment. Adam is an affable aspiring-screenwriter with a famous dad who agrees to go along with her “friends with benefits” scheme. The script is generic; with dialogue so wooden you could build a house with it. The jokes fall flat, dramatic tension is mostly absent, and there is an overall desperate quality to appear young and hip, which results in a lot of uses of the f-word, drug references and dick jokes. 

Thankfully, the actors are game enough and their energy is the one thing that keeps the film afloat. What I appreciate most is how unabashedly weird all of the supporting players are. Self-aware awkwardness (think Michael Cera) is in vogue right now and this movie world is populated with hilariously self-conscious characters. Mindy Kaling, Jake Johnson and Lake Bell are particular standouts, wringing laughs out of lines that seem cringe worthy on paper.

The two leads don’t come off quite as well as their supporting cast mates. Ashton Kutcher rides along on his particular brand of boyish charm. I’m generally a fan of Kutcher’s work (Tweets excluded), but he’s giving the same performance he’s given in his past dozen films. It works well-enough if you’ve never seen another Kutcher vehicle, but it’s mostly familiar territory.

Then we get to Natalie Portman, who is really in a class of her own in this film. (She looks so uncannily like Giada De Laurentis that I kept expecting her to tell me how to use fresh mozzarella.) Emma is supposed to be an inaccessible, career-driven woman so afraid of getting hurt that she’s convinced herself it’s better not to feel anything. She’s a dark-and-twisty-Meredith-Grey type (to borrow from another doctor themed program). The only trouble is Portman doesn’t even for a moment manage to be anything other than vulnerable and flirtatious. But it’s just so charming to watch her try to play tough. Like watching a baby try and walk for the first time. She is putting a lot of effort in and it’s producing very few results, but she just looks so cute.

I had a hard time coming up with a final grade for this movie. It’s not good by any stretch of the imagination. It’s long and slow and the central relationship lacks any real stakes. Sure, I was bothered by the generic mid-life-crisis father and the scene in which two men argue over who deserves the girl without ever stopping to consider that she may have an opinion in the matter. I could raise issue with the fact that the movie presents menstruation as a literal plague that makes women unable to function and requires them to be spoon-fed soup. But at the same time I kind of enjoyed watching it. There were several genuinely funny moments (such as a drunken Emma instructing a cab driver to take her to “Adam’s house. Where Adam lives.”) Portman and Kutcher have an easy chemistry which never really ignites sparks, but instead simmers with a kind of friendly comfort. It’s a mediocre movie that is almost (almost) saved by its enjoyable cast.

Reality factor: Two super hot friends have great sex and get along perfectly and I’m supposed to feel bad that one is a commitment-phobe? [2 out of 5]

Eye-candy factor: I’ve always found Kutcher more goofy than hot, but if he’s your particular brand of man, you certainly get to see a lot of him in this film. [4 out of 5]

Aww factor: This is a film that largely avoids sentimentality in favor of comedy. I appreciate the commitment to staying away from schmaltz, but I could have done with a little bit more genuine connection between the two leads. [2 out of 5]