By Joshua Knopp/managing editor
No Strings Attached could have been a thoughtful examination of the dichoatomy between love and sex, made marketable by popular leads and the director of Ghostbusters.
It wasn’t.
Photo courtesy Paramount Pictures
The film begins a decade in the past, chronicling Emma’s (Natalie Portman) first meeting with Adam (Ashton Kutcher). After a brief scene, it flashes forward five years to their second meeting, also a brief, irrelevant scene.
Then comes the present day, in which Adam and Emma realize they are living in the same city and begin to have casual sex. The rest of the movie can be easily predicted from this point.
No Strings Attached is so much like every other romantic comedy out there that there’s very little to say. The romance is largely ignored until the end. The comedy is drawn more from clownish secondary characters than the actual plot.
Kutcher is fairly charming in his role. His character is plagued by feelings of romance in supposedly a purely sexual relationship and by his father’s (Kevin Kline) relationship with an ex-girlfriend. He expresses his emotions without stating them outright, which is the basic premise of acting. Opposite him, Portman is excellent as always.
A number of questions have to be risen about why this movie was made at all, not because it was that bad but because it has no niche among current and upcoming films.
No Strings Attached directly opposes The Dilemma — a better movie which was released just a week before — in the romantic comedy genre. Their theatrical runs will overlap heavily, probably losing both franchises a great deal of money.
Delaying the release a few months wouldn’t have put No Strings Attached into a less clustered environment, either. Love and Other Drugs, released last November, has almost entirely the same premise, and Friends with Benefits will release July 11.
These films aren’t just of the same genre, they all have the same twist. The attempt to reflect the changing nature of relationships is obvious and appreciated, but three such films in less than a calendar year?
