Casual sex and Natalie Portman sounds like a pretty agreeable combination.
Add in a little Ashton Kutcher and that recipe turns toxic pretty fast.
But that's the premise of No Strings Attached, which asks the seemingly age-old question - answered best in an early Seinfeld episode - of can two people have sex and still remain just friends?
The movie that Portman originally signed up for was entitled F*** Buddies, before Paramount figured out that would be too tough to market. (I, for one, feel like nearly every male aged 16-30 in the U.S. would see a movie called F*** Buddies starring Natalie Portman.)
So instead, the script got a major rewrite, and we get a toned-down, jumbled, cautious (if still R-rated) waste of time.
Portman plays Emma, an emotionally detached medical student who doesn't have time or tolerance for an emotional relationship. Just a coincidence, then, that she runs into Adam (Kutcher), a childhood acquaintance who's reeling from just learning that his ex-girlfriend is now dating his dad (Kevin Kline).
The two start a strictly physical relationship, built on such rules as no breakfast the morning after, no cuddling and certainly no dates. A few montages and simulated sex scenes later, and things go south when Adam starts to fall in love.
Emma can't deal and breaks the whole thing off, leaving Adam to go after the table scraps of a co-worker. But the impending wedding of Emma's sister puts her own misgivings into a whole new perspective, as she starts to realize that going through life as boobs, legs and butt may be the wrong way to go.
It isn't surprising that the movie got a rewrite, because remnants of the old script linger. While rom-coms aren't known for brilliant dialogue and realistic narrative, this movie can't decide if it wants to be a raunchy buddy movie or a sweet chick flick. There are many awkward scenes that only advance the script in marginal, unnecessary ways, lots of moments we've seen far too many times before and plenty of bad one-liners that the writer must have found in Judd Apatow's trash can.
And while this is the ultimate genre in which people see a movie simply for its stars, Portman is the only one worth going for. Kutcher is the male version of Katherine Heigl, Cary Elwes (yes, he's in this) is still living off, of all things, a Robin Hood spoof and Kline is now going on 14 years without being in a film of any consequence. Good casting could have at least turned this into a middle-of-the-road guilty pleasure. Bad casting made it hard to endure.
And Ivan Reitman, renowned helmer of landmarks like Kindergarten Cop and My Super Ex-Girlfriend, was never going to save the day.
So that leaves us with a bad script, bad actors and a bad director. In other words, your standard Hollywood rom-com.
- Cameron Dunbar is a sophomore studying journalism. If you too think of the 'N Sync album when you hear No Strings Attached, don't be ashamed and tell him at cd211209@ohiou.edu.
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Cameron Dunbar
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