The seemingly guarded secret of “No Strings Attached” is that it actually has good acting. However, the film tries very hard to conceal this fact. The disappointing aspect is that much of the good performances are hidden until the end, placed intermittently between overused stereotypes and gender roles, with somewhat un-supporting characters until the climax. However, if you can get through some of the banality of the early plot, there is a decent movie to be found.
“No Strings Attached” pits two friends against the age-old question: Can friends be lovers without falling in love? Ashton Kutcher (Adam) and Natalie Portman (Emma) take on this question to find out.
For Emma, the answer is most certainly yes, as she has spent much of her young-adult life vigorously attached to the idea that she can make it alone and doesn’t need the support of friends, family or men to do this. Adam likes Emma, and is not so sure. However, for most of the film he is not given a chance, pitted against Emma’s stalwart conviction of the un-necessity of romance or affection, let alone love. At an early point in the film we see the filmmakers stamp this on her character as, at a funeral she has invited Adam to, she flimsily throws into the face of her mother that Adam isn’t her boyfriend, just someone she had a one-night stand with when she was 14, and refers to her sister’s almost-fiancée as her sister’s “lover.”
The point that Emma doesn’t get attached easily is a given, and, to question the script briefly, is forced on the audience with a conviction that the filmmakers want us to believe more than it seems Emma does. Portman does a good job with what she had to work with. She’s a very talented actress, as audiences have seen in movies such as “Garden State,” and “Black Swan,” but seems, in the 1st, and 2nd act of this movie, to be limited to the stereotype of the emotionally unavailable woman.
Kutcher does a good job at portraying Adam, a thirty-something rebounding from a bad break-up 8 months ago. As if that wasn’t enough, he also has to contend with an unfulfilling job, one-sided friends and finding out that he lost his girlfriend to, of all people, his father. Kevin Kline, playing Adam’s dad, also does a decent job portraying a character unlike others we’ve seen, but seems severely limited from his potential. Those who remember the movie “Life as a House,” and recall his tender, heartbreaking performance may question the need for this caliber actor for the aloof character of Adam’s dad.
Friends of “sex-friends” Adam and Emma, such as Greta Gerwig and Ludacris do little to soften the plot, or support the main characters. Unlike the movie “The Forty Year Old Virgin,” they serve not to push the main character toward meaningful change, but to constrain him. Ludacris, Adam’s friend, and another serve only to assuage Adam’s feelings of longing for Emma with empty platitudes to man up and enjoy “every man’s dream,” while Gerwig and Emma’s other friends seem too involved in their own life, and add little to the mix. Shira, one of Emma’s friends coldly tells her in one scene: “You’re starting to get depressing to hang around, so don’t be surprised if I start ignoring you in the halls.”
Given support like this, it is no surprise that the main characters often feel lost, and have only themselves and their purposefully confusing situation to turn to for answers.
That is not to say there are no answers to be found. Some of the supporting characters, such as Adam’s dad come around, lending support at the most unlikely of times, and although the plot moves toward a predictable ending, you’re still pleased to see it.
Without giving away more of the film, “No Strings Attached” offers a few gems, mostly in the performance of Kutcher, who is less comedic and actually endearing and Portman’s portrayal of her character in the closing acts. For a movie about how not to feel, the movie ends up serving the opposite, showing Adam and Emma just what they could be missing if they decide to admit it to themselves.
-by Mark Ziobro
