For anyone who has seen Natalie Portman in "Black Swan," her starring role in the new romantic comedy "No Strings Attached," directed by Ivan Reitman and also starring Ashton Kutcher, will certainly seem like less of an event. Obligatory endeavors for many rising movie stars, romantic comedies are undoubtedly some of the most disposable, forgettable and generally poorly made films to come out of Hollywood today.
It is because of the low-quality of the romantic comedy that we must consider them not in the context of modern cinema—"No Strings Attached" should not be mentioned in the same sentence as "Black Swan"—but within their own genre. How does this film stack up to the other recent romantic comedies?
Let's begin with our two protagonists. Both live in Los Angeles, Emma (Portman) working around the clock as a doctor, and Adam (Kutcher) as a television screenwriter. Though Emma seems to have a great deal of emotional depth as a character and Adam has absolutely none, the two somehow end up together.
The film begins with a "15 years ago" flashback of the two characters as children together at a summer camp where they first meet, then flashes forward to "5 years ago" when Emma (now played by Portman), runs into Adam (now Kutcher) at a raucous college party when she is visiting her friend at the University of Michigan.
Kutcher is perfect in the drunken college partier role, which works well in this two-minute long scene, but when he extends this persona to the breadth of the entire film, the shtick becomes somewhat stale and out of place. His character is supposed to exhibit growth over the course of the film, and though he grows enough for his sexual habits to mature, his character is ultimately still stuck at Michigan.
Emma is complex and quirky enough to exceed the standards of romantic female stars. The last romantic comedy I saw was "Love and Other Drugs," and compared to the performance of its heroine, Emma succeeds in portraying an equally complicated (except for the Parkinson's) and much more likable character. In "Love and Other Drugs," we are not entirely convinced that we want the couple to be together at the film's close; in this film, at least, we are rooting for them the entire way.
One strength of this film, which can often be the pitfall of a romantic comedy, is in its side characters. The compulsory quirky best friends are played by Jake Johnson, Kevin Kline and Ludacris on Adam's side, and Greta Gerwig, Olivia Thirlby and Mindy Kaling on Emma's.
Due to the high number of background actors, screen time outside of scenes featuring just Adam and Emma becomes rather crowded, and since there is considerable acting talent there, it is a shame that these actors aren't given more space. The only side character that disappoints is Jake Johnson's Eli (Adam's best friend), who is much less outrageous than we have come to expect from the archetypal male best friend.
The film's obvious weak point is in its dialogue. Written by Elizabeth Meriwether, the screenplay strives for—and in many cases achieves—a lighthearted and easily accessible humor. However, there are far too many awkward moments, lazy in their execution and obvious in their purposes.
For example, when Eli is flirting with a female character, the substance of their conversation is about whether or not he will confirm her Facebook friend request. Similarly, most of the conversation between Adam and his friends revolves around text messages and how to respond to them. These bits of dialogue are clearly attempts to make the characters seem in touch with the young, technologically-apt crowd, but knowledge of text messages and Facebook hardly conveys this effectively, and the interjection of this dialogue is cumbersome.
However, faulting a modern romantic comedy for its lame dialogue is like blaming a horror film for lacking humor, and regardless, "No Strings Attached" delivers as much as we can hope from this genre of film.
Though puzzling in its awkward moments, it's enjoyable throughout.