Director: Ivan Reitman
Writer: Elizabeth Meriwether
Staring: Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher
Release Date: January 21, 2010
Length: 1 hour 50 minutes
The beautiful Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher star in Ivan Reitman’s new romantic comedy, No Strings Attached. The film manages to squish two major overdone plot elements into one story. One being that this is yet another film with the “friends with benefits” premise and the second being that the girl in the story for some reason doesn’t believe in love while the boy is a hopeless romantic. Emma Kurtzman and Adam Franklin first meet at summer camp when they are teenagers, and continue to coincidently meet at 5-year intervals, similar to the classic romcom When Harry Met Sally. Now, Emma is working as a doctor at a local hospital, while Adam is an assistant producer of a glee-like TV show. Meeting for the fourth time in their lives, Adam shows up drunk at Emma’s door, crashes at her place for the night and the two spontaneously have sex the next morning. Discovering this idea of having sex without getting emotionally involved, Adam and more enthusiastically, Emma, decide to continue their sex-friendship by meeting up whenever one of them wants to. Things get messy though, when Adam has feelings for Emma and suggests dating. Feeling uncomfortable about this, Emma rejects the idea and starts to internally question letting her guard down for once. Like every romantic comedy, No Strings Attached has clichés in the storyline, unoriginal characters, type-casted supporting characters and one predictable happy ending. If the film is funny or cute enough though, these facets can be easily overlooked. However, this film had a consistent aspect of randomness, an aspect I believe, that can make or break a movie. The large amount of randomness in the film provided the humor, most of the plot changes and even some characters. Unfortunately, I did not find the whimsy of No Strings Attached appealing. It caused the film to progress at a very quick pace, with almost no character development, even though the characters were already predictable stereotypes. The arbitrary dialogue in each scene did sometimes evoke humor but caused the entire story as a whole to not make any sense. It almost seemed that no one involved in the making of this film knew what was really going on and just wanted to make a funny movie. There were numerous small characters that were added just because they were odd and funny but they had no real importance to the story. With all these futile personalities trying to be rolled into the movie, there was just way too much going on at once. The film also did not benefit from pointless subplots, such as Adam’s dad dating his ex-girlfriend or Adam trying to become a writer on the show he works for. There are some hilarious one-liners in the script but I couldn’t find most of them funny because I didn’t understand the point of the character saying them and that fueled an annoyance within me that overtook everything else mildly entertaining in the film. Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman both carried the film nicely and shared a great comedic as well as romantic chemistry, however they weren’t enough to distract me from the lack of plot in the film. Oddly enough, the only people that really made me laugh was Lake Bell as Adam’s bizarre boss who likes him and The Office’s Mindy Kaling as one of Emma’s best friends and co-workers. Both actresses’ unpredictability in their characters was so much stronger than everybody else’s and leads me to believe they used a lot more improvisation in their performances. No Strings Attached is one of those movies that you either love or hate. Personally, I need story structure to any movie I see and don’t appreciate all these characters just doing crazy things to bring laughs out of the audience. However, if you’re one of those people who doesn’t really care about the plot and just wants to be entertained, this is probably the film for you.
Writer: Elizabeth Meriwether
Staring: Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher
Release Date: January 21, 2010
Length: 1 hour 50 minutes
The beautiful Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher star in Ivan Reitman’s new romantic comedy, No Strings Attached. The film manages to squish two major overdone plot elements into one story. One being that this is yet another film with the “friends with benefits” premise and the second being that the girl in the story for some reason doesn’t believe in love while the boy is a hopeless romantic. Emma Kurtzman and Adam Franklin first meet at summer camp when they are teenagers, and continue to coincidently meet at 5-year intervals, similar to the classic romcom When Harry Met Sally. Now, Emma is working as a doctor at a local hospital, while Adam is an assistant producer of a glee-like TV show. Meeting for the fourth time in their lives, Adam shows up drunk at Emma’s door, crashes at her place for the night and the two spontaneously have sex the next morning. Discovering this idea of having sex without getting emotionally involved, Adam and more enthusiastically, Emma, decide to continue their sex-friendship by meeting up whenever one of them wants to. Things get messy though, when Adam has feelings for Emma and suggests dating. Feeling uncomfortable about this, Emma rejects the idea and starts to internally question letting her guard down for once. Like every romantic comedy, No Strings Attached has clichés in the storyline, unoriginal characters, type-casted supporting characters and one predictable happy ending. If the film is funny or cute enough though, these facets can be easily overlooked. However, this film had a consistent aspect of randomness, an aspect I believe, that can make or break a movie. The large amount of randomness in the film provided the humor, most of the plot changes and even some characters. Unfortunately, I did not find the whimsy of No Strings Attached appealing. It caused the film to progress at a very quick pace, with almost no character development, even though the characters were already predictable stereotypes. The arbitrary dialogue in each scene did sometimes evoke humor but caused the entire story as a whole to not make any sense. It almost seemed that no one involved in the making of this film knew what was really going on and just wanted to make a funny movie. There were numerous small characters that were added just because they were odd and funny but they had no real importance to the story. With all these futile personalities trying to be rolled into the movie, there was just way too much going on at once. The film also did not benefit from pointless subplots, such as Adam’s dad dating his ex-girlfriend or Adam trying to become a writer on the show he works for. There are some hilarious one-liners in the script but I couldn’t find most of them funny because I didn’t understand the point of the character saying them and that fueled an annoyance within me that overtook everything else mildly entertaining in the film. Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman both carried the film nicely and shared a great comedic as well as romantic chemistry, however they weren’t enough to distract me from the lack of plot in the film. Oddly enough, the only people that really made me laugh was Lake Bell as Adam’s bizarre boss who likes him and The Office’s Mindy Kaling as one of Emma’s best friends and co-workers. Both actresses’ unpredictability in their characters was so much stronger than everybody else’s and leads me to believe they used a lot more improvisation in their performances. No Strings Attached is one of those movies that you either love or hate. Personally, I need story structure to any movie I see and don’t appreciate all these characters just doing crazy things to bring laughs out of the audience. However, if you’re one of those people who doesn’t really care about the plot and just wants to be entertained, this is probably the film for you.
Thanks for the review of this film. You're writing is great.
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