No Strings Attached

There are two films this year about fuck buddies, and No Strings Attached is the good one. Ivan Reitman, the formerly brilliant director of great '80s comedies like Stripes and Ghostbusters, brings credible warmth to this rather shallow material.  This premise could make for a terrific movie, but it would be much better in the form of a small, raged and dirty indie than a big-budget studio picture forced to be as sterile as a sanitized countertop.  Still, the screenplay is well constructed, and Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher are fun playing a high-powered young gal and guy who want a strictly physical relationship without all the complicated love stuff.

There are some funny lines and sequences in the film, and the supporting cast is strong and occasionally surprising, but what makes the film work is Portman’s performance and the way her character is written.  It is a smart choice to present the film from the perspective of the female character, because we don't usually assume that women are the ones who want these arrangements of convenience, although that assumption is ridiculous.  The film’s counterpart, Friends with Benefits, is told mostly from the male perspective, and it’s just not as interesting.  (That film, which stars Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, is an ultra-shallow assembly line comedy that feels woefully artificial at nearly every turn.)

It would be great to see Portman in more roles like this.  She has a talent for light comedy that is so important for a young actress to develop. Reitman also extracts a decent performance from Kutcher, who doesn't seem like he'll be turning into Cary Grant anytime soon.  While the film is not as sexy as the premise might suggest, No Strings Attached is what passes for a decent rom-com in this day and age so I'll take it.