2 stars (out of four)
I wonder, how did the script of No Strings Attached describe its leads? “Enter Adam, an attractive young man who looks and acts exactly like Ashton Kutcher.” Or maybe: “Emma is a beautiful young woman who, if we’re lucky, looks and acts exactly like Natalie Portman.” The movie seems to have been constructed around the knowledge that two likable stars would fill these roles, which allows the filmmakers to forgo the arduous process of creating interesting and believable characters. We come to the movie already prepared to like these people because the trailers and posters have informed us who plays them, a trick that works for No Strings Attached more than it should. Adam (Kutcher) and Emma (Portman) are not quite friends at the beginning of the film. They have had a few awkward encounters in their youths, including a humorous failed seduction by Adam at summer camp and a chance reunion at a college party years later. From the start, Adam clearly likes her. And who wouldn’t? She shows up to a pajama-themed frat party wearing long johns and still manages to look good.
Emma decides to follow up this second encounter by inviting Adam to her father’s funeral the next morning. The funeral scene, the last of a brief prologue, opens the door for a decidedly darker sense of humor than the movie continues with afterward. Think for a moment though about what kind of girl would party the night before her father is buried and then invite a more-or-less stranger to the services. That girl probably wouldn’t look or act anything like Natalie Portman. But never mind that. The opening scenes lay down the groundwork for characterization that the rest of the film largely ignores. Never again do we see these morbid tendencies from Emma, nor does Adam ever resemble anything close to the goofy frat guy he is in the movie’s second scene.
In the present day, they meet once more and possibly feel a spark so they exchange numbers. Adam soon breaks up with his current girlfriend and has a bad night of drunken phones calls that leads him to Emma’s apartment the next morning. From here they decide to embark on a relationship their friends tell them is impossible: to have casual sex without ever allowing romance to enter the equation.
To pad this rather weak premise, No Strings Attached is filled with supporting performances, perhaps even crowded with them. Adam’s buddies (Jake Johnson and Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges) give him the requisite “guy advice” and Emma’s apartment-mates (The Office’s Mindy Kaling, Greta Gerwig and Guy Branum) take their turns ogling Adam and envying her new fling. The best of these actors is Jake Johnson, who has enough charm to make an otherwise forgettable role funny. Ludacris too gets some chuckles, though the strangeness of him even being in this movie might have a lot to do with that.
Then there is Adam’s father (played by Kevin Kline), a one-time TV celebrity who starts sleeping with Adam’s ex (Ophelia Lovibond). These scenes strive for comedy but consistently fail, though fault does not lie with Kline or Lovibond. Too often, these goofy scenes try to hang real emotions on their characters, resulting in an uneven tone.
Despite the overabundance of side characters, attention never strays from Adam and Emma for very long. Unfortunately, their characters are almost entirely defined by their relationship. Adam hopes for romance and so he is painted as the emotional and considerate Nice Guy. Emma prefers to keep her distance from such intimacy and is an Independent Woman. Their jobs are typical for a movie of this kind and serve little purpose other than to supply potential romantic rivals. Emma works at a hospital where an improbably rugged doctor-in-training (Ben Lawson) shows some interest in her, and Adam is a production assistant for a Glee-type show with aspirations of becoming a writer. Also on the set of Adam’s show is Lake Bell, whose foul-mouthed turn as a neurotic co-worker obsessed with Adam deserves more screen time than she gets.
The comedy in No Strings Attached is hit or miss and the movie is better at crafting cute moments than it is funny ones. The movie elicits a fair amount of smiles but no real laughs. This is really only a problem in Kline’s scenes as the father, which go for the laughs and fall short. For the most part, however, the movie is content to be a middle-of-the-road romantic comedy made up of recycled parts. That Ivan Reitman, who once upon a time made Ghostbusters, directed this movie is a little disconcerting, but as an entry in the romantic comedy genre, there has been much worse than No Strings Attached.
Strip away the side characters and meager plot, and you have the one element that every romantic comedy lives or dies on: the chemistry between its leads. The chemistry between Kutcher and Portman is hardly sizzling, but they were cast for a reason. More often than the movie deserves, the likeability of its actors keeps the production afloat. Their characters' relationship doesn’t have enough substance to get us really rooting for them, but there is a certain comfort in seeing two nice, attractive people get together on screen. For a movie with such modest ambitions as No Strings Attached, that seems to be enough.
- Steve Avigliano, 1/23/11
Great lead - I've never seen this, what seems to be a very common character-making strategy, spelled out so well.
ReplyDeletei really liked this movie it spoke to my generation about casual love unfolding into a relationship.
ReplyDeletenah i'm jk but it wuz pretti gud