After unfurling the majority of their high profile releases for the holidays and awards season, studios slowly trickle out the leftovers in the first few months of the new year. You can rest assured that a crappy romantic comedy will always be among the bunch to kick things off on a sour note. In 2009, it was 27 Dresses and Leap Year in 2010. The torrent of bad rom-coms in 2011 opens with No Strings Attached, the flipside to When Harry Met Sally. While Rob Reiner's film posited the question of whether men and women could be friends without sex being involved, No Strings Attached is all about men and women having sex without emotional attachment.
Natalie Portman is Emma, a medical resident working 80 hours a week. Ashton Kutcher is Adam, a production assistant on a Glee-esque TV show. A prologue opens the movie showing how Emma and Adam first met at summer camp and how they would bump into each other every few years. It's a blunt way to tell the audience that these two were destined to be together. One day, Adam gets dumped by his girlfriend for his father (Kevin Kline), an aging sitcom star. In response, Adam gets drunk and somehow wakes up naked in Emma's apartment. They quickly have sex and Emma decides to use Adam on a purely carnal level. He eventually desired a more meaningful relationship, while she is reticent for anything long-term.
Rare is the romantic comedy that is rated R. The script, written by Liz Meriwether, originally began as a raunchy female buddy comedy entitled Fuck Buddies. The screenplay managed to make Hollywood's Black List (a compendium of hot, unproduced scripts) in 2008. However, committee filmmaking rears its ugly head. You can tell the story was rewritten and rewritten to make it more palpable to mainstream audiences. The original version featured the female protagonist describing a sojourn to Napa Valley as a "dick tasting trip." The final film contains just enough of an edge so that the males in the audience aren't too embarrassed about seeing an Ashton Kutcher movie without the words "Dude" and "Where's My Car?" in the title.
Portman has generally avoided these types of films, but seems like she's looking to shed the good girl persona with her recent performances here and in Black Swan. While she brings a bubbly personality and a winning smile to the role, the novelty of a horny, foul-mouthed Portman wears thin because the material isn't particularly funny or genuine. Kutcher is bland through and through, doing nothing memorable whatsoever. Where the leads fail, the supporting cast shines. The movie really belongs to the secondary characters, including Olivia Thirlby as Emma's younger sister and Greta Gerwig and Mindy Kaling from The Office as two of Emma's friends and roommates. Gerwig gets the most substantial role and it's great to see the former matron of the mumblecore movement receiving more high-profile work. Let's hope she isn't forever cast as the kooky best friend (i.e. Judy Greer). Also good is Lake Bell, who displays deft comic timing as a nerdy and talkative co-worker of Adam's.
Hmm…there's an idea for a picture, a story revolving around the tertiary characters in a standard rom-com plot. It would do to romantic comedies what The Other Guys did to the buddy cop movie.
Rating: * ½ (*****)
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