Sunday, January 23, 2011

Review: "No Strings Attached" (2011)






by Melissa Hanson

"Can sex friends stay best friends?"

Really? I can understand why they chose this tagline, but it really doesn't fit. From the trailers I've seen, this was about best friends who decide to have sex without the relationship. It's really not. They barely know each other. I guess they needed a hook, but I think they could have cut out all the cliched stuff and really focused on the "relationship" between the two characters.

The characters of Emma (Natalie Portman) and Adam (Ashton Kutcher) have met a couple times in the past before they begin their sexcapades. This is really unnecessary, but I'm guessing they were trying to make the audience think they were destined to be together because they keep bumping into one another. Anyway, after a night of drunkenness to attempt to forget about his father (Kevin Kline) dating his ex-girlfriend, he ends up at Emma's apartment with her roommates. This is another thing; although the roommates were amusing, there was way too much time in the initial scene when Adam wakes up. Actually, a lot of the scenes were unnecessarily long.

The first huge flaw is that they are not equally entering into this. Adam wants to date Emma, she doesn't want that, so he settles for just having sex with her. Hello, big flag. I could understand if this was friends, who never thought of each other as anything else, deciding to try this out because they think it could work. It can work for a while, but eventually, something's gotta give. But this is just silly. They offhandedly establish ground rules, but it's not really given much attention. If you're going to do a story like this, commit to it, don't do it half-ass.

All-in-all, it's not the worst movie in the world, it's cute, there are some very funny lines spoken by the endless supporting cast. Kevin Kline is actually very good as the father, but his and other characters were just taken a little too far to get the laugh. I would have liked it dialed down. I think it will have a fabulous run on TBS.

There is another movie coming out later this year called "Friends with Benefits." The premise of that movie seems much more plausible and more like what I hoped this would be: The story centers around two professionals who meet but are too busy to find a mate. They agree to have an intimate relationship with no strings attached. Things get complicated when the guy falls for the girl, who’s dating someone else.


P.S. Ivan Reitman?! Why?! Why?!

P.P.S. Cary Elwes?! Why were you in this movie? Did you even speak? I barely recognized you!

No comments:

Post a Comment