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Friday, January 21, 2011
MOVIE REVIEW
No Strings Attached
No Script Attached, But The
Daily Grind Is Intact
Natalie Portman and Greta Gerwig star in "No Strings Attached".
Ivan Reitman's
romantic comedy opened today.
Paramount Pictures
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
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Friday,
January 21, 2011
Fringe benefits. Sex without love. These are the joys and horrors of
emotional disengagement that play out in Ivan Reitman's romantic comedy "No
Strings Attached", which opened today across the U.S. and Canada. Natalie
Portman is Emma, a hospital worker in Los Angeles. Ashton Kutcher is Adam,
an assistant TV director on Paramount's studio lot. Over a 15 year-stretch
Emma and Adam have chance meetings. There's possibility and awkwardness
between them. Emma and Adam soon develop a vigorous buddy-buddy bedroom
rapport. Will their sexual dance survive? Or will love eclipse it?
Chemistry binds Ms. Portman and Mr. Kutcher, both physically and emotionally,
and in their raunchier interactions, as it did Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal
in last year's romantic comedy
"Love And Other Drugs". Ms. Portman dives
headlong into theatrics to augment Emma's ever-changing mood. Mr.
Kutcher's Adam is mostly stationary, sidelined by sight gags that aren't funny,
including bare naked behinds. (Ho-hum. Why we need to see it is
anyone's guess.) Adam says an insightful line or two but is limited to
modeling his physique if not his smarts. Adam often looks as if he's about
to say something funny, and that, sadly, is the extent of Mr. Kutcher's comedic
journey in the film. When he actually says something that's meant to be
funny, it isn't.
"No Strings Attached" has opportunities to explore issues surrounding "free
love" and its consequences. What does it mean to be emotionally
disconnected while being connected physically but not attached? Isn't
there irony and comedy in that scenario? How can Emma and Adam, both
working jobs where they interact daily with dozens of people, reconcile their
own tangential tango? Sex may be a cup of coffee to them and to many
real-life professionals. Such individuals and others sometimes want a
quick cup of whomever to keep them alive amidst the mundane trappings of a daily
grind surrounded by iPods, IMs, DMs -- and the old in-and-out. The film
however, looks at none of these issues, nor dares to.
Elizabeth Meriwether's script doesn't plunge beyond its network of shallow
characters. Nor does the screenplay entertain situations that would have
made any comedy underlying them sharp and interesting. Shallow can be good
in a film, but here shallow isn't funny. You can see many of the actors
standing around trying to be funny, reaching for the scatological branches to
grab a fig leaf to cover it with. Much of the film feels mechanical and
overdone. The mistake "No Strings Attached" makes is in its imitation of
other comedies with its needless and continuous references to anatomical
functions. The film scrapes desperately for laughs. The bottom of
that barrel has long been emptied out. Once the vulgarity starts, any
comedy evaporates.
The lone bright star in the film is Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Adam's sole beacon
of enlightenment. Mr. Bridges is the only one who seems to have the right
tone and attitude, but his screen time is at a premium. He's the only one
I laughed with, and not at. (I didn't laugh at or with anyone else.)
"There's Something About Mary" laughed at itself and took chances to do wild,
irreverent and outlandish things. The film knew its own limits and its
writing was smart. With "No Strings", the script is littered with the
kinds of disposable jokes and dialogue that sounded funny 20 or 30 years ago.
Today, the same jokes are beyond stale. "No Strings Attached" is strung
together by one laborious, unfunny skit after another. One of the most
telling things about the film was listening to the invited screening audience's
laughter. It sounded fake, like laugh-track laughter, the kind used so
effectively during a TV show scene in "Natural Born Killers". Pining for
"Carnal Knowledge", I came away feeling angered and unfulfilled by "No Strings"'
lack of ambition and fulfillment in its own genre. Despite mediocre comedy
work from Ms. Portman, Mr. Reitman's film feels tentative and lacks confidence.
One might think Mr. Reitman intended an inside joke for his leading man by
inserting Kevin Kline's Alvin as a punch-lined reverse-Ashton Kutcher-Bruce Willis-Demi
Moore real-life situation involving a relationship (or relationships).
You'll understand what I'm getting at if you see the film. Mr. Kline is
fine as Adam's famous and adventuresome father. Like others however, he's
utilized chiefly for expediency, especially in a late scene that is false,
cruelly manipulative and predictable. There's no innovation or enervation
in these "Strings", only fatigue over a poor and pointless two hours.
With: Greta Gerwig,
Lake Bell, Cary Elwes, Olivia Thirlby, Mindy Kaling, Talia Balsam, Ophelia
Lovibond, Jennifer Irwin, Abby Elliott, Vedette Lim, Gary David Goldberg, Ivan
Reitman.
"No Strings Attached" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of
America for sexual content, language and some drug material. The film's
running time is one hour and 50 minutes.
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