No Strings Attached

A Usual Hollywood’s Concept of Romance

The Story:

Emma (Natalie Portman) and Adam (Ashton Kutcher) are known each other since a long time, although they’ve never been closed. After didn’t meet for quite a while, they found themselves having sex in a morning. Following this event, they make a pact to become a sex-friends, keep their relationship strictly “no strings attached.”

“No strings” means no jealousy, no expectations, no fighting, no flowers, no baby voices. It means they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, in whatever public place they want, as long as they don’t fall in love. The question becomes — who’s going to fall first? And can their friendship survive?

Release Date: January 21, 2011
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Directed By: Ivan Reitman (Stripes, Ghostbusters, Kindergarten Cop, Dave, My Super Ex-Girlfriend)
Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Natalie Portman, Kevin Kline, Greta Gerwig
Budget: $25,000,000
Gross Revenue: $70,625,986 (USA) $147,531,431 (worldwide)

Review:

Although has became so generic in recent years, romantic comedy always serves as Hollywood’s no. 1 money machine. The story of two friends (Adam and Emma) who decide to having sex anytime they want without a real romantic attachment also not something that we can’t predict the outcome. But most of the time, rom-com is not about the plot, but it’s about how they executed it. How about No Strings Attached?

As any other movies in this genre, No Strings Attached is filled with sweetness, warm moments, dirty jokes, and the chemistry between the actor and actress. In those aspects, the director made a good job in making this film entertaining.

What’s really bugging me is the character development. Since the first moment they met, we’ve already seen how Adam is about to fall in love to Emma at anytime. While we also knew that Emma won’t be attracted to him romantically. But why? Emma is so strictly in rejecting love, but in the other hand there’s no explanation about why she doesn’t believe in love besides said that it’s “unreal”. Later in the movie, eventually her feeling toward Adams started to change. This is also the part where I felt like Adam didn’t do enough to win her heart, and it seems like she just suddenly had a change of heart.

I didn’t say that an Oscar winner can’t play in a light comedy movie, as we’ve had Meryl Streep, Helen Hunt, Julia Roberts, or Sandra Bullock before. Natalie Portman is a great actress, it just too bad that this time the script is such a waste for her talent. Fortunately, she, and Ashton Kutcher too, looks physically good, which is probably the best thing from this movie.

My Rating: C+

IMDb user rating: 6.2/10

Rotten Tomatoes meter: 49%

Metacritic: 50/100

Yahoo! critics: C

Yahoo! users: B+

Your Ratings: (1 votes, average: 2.00 out of 5)
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Note that ratings and gross revenue are based from when this review was written, so the values might already changed by now.