No Strings Attached is the story of two friends, played by Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, who decide that instead of dealing with the messy emotional entanglements of traditional relationships, they will have a sexual relationship with each other that focuses purely on the physical act and leaves any sort of romanticism or commitment by the wayside. Conflict arises, however, when one of the two begins to… wait. What did you say? Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis aren’t in this? I thought I saw a preview and Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis were in this. Friends With Benefits? So that’s a completely different thing? This isn’t the one that’s got Woody Harrelson? Ashton Kutcher? Aw, crap.
Okay, starting over. No Strings Attached is the story of two friends, played by Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman, who decide that instead of dealing with the messy emotional entanglements of traditional relationships, they will have a sexual relationship with each other that focuses purely on the physical act and leaves any sort of romanticism or commitment by the wayside. Conflict arises, however, when one of the two begins to have deeper feelings for the other, and the legitimacy of their arrangement starts to be called into question. No, this movie doesn’t have Woody Harrelson or Emma Stone like the upcoming Friends With Benefits, but it’s got a really strong supporting cast of its own, and it was directed by Ivan Reitman. Sure, he doesn’t have the strongest batting average as a director, but he made Ghostbusters and Kindergarten Cop, so the least he deserves is that we give him a chance.
And giving him a chance won’t end with you burned at all. Depending on how much you enjoy romantic comedies, you could walk out of this one pretty pleased. The thing that it has over most of the other films in this genre is that it is actually legitimately funny in places. No Strings Attached isn’t Kate Hudson tripping over things or Katherine Heigl getting poo on her face funny; there are actually jokes here that seem like they might have even been written into the script. And a little Googling lets me know that the screenwriter, Elizabeth Meriwether, has a previous writing credit on the show Children’s Hospital, which was created by Rob Cordry and employs a whole bunch of talented comedians. So good, we’re not in terrible hands here. The jokes succeed, mostly because they’re played straight by all the actors. There is a scene depicting a group of white, middle aged producer women behind the scenes of a television show representing High School Musical, lamely trying to dance and sing along to the music during shooting that really cracked me up. Instantly I thought about how corny and overplayed this joke would have been in 90% of the other romantic comedies that come out. But here it was presented subtly, and in the background, making it about ten times funnier. We never enter the realm of rapping grannies. The jokes work because the actors never acknowledge that they’re in on the humor. They say and do ridiculous things at times, but they do them earnestly. There is no winking at the camera and waiting for a laugh track.
Aside from the script, the biggest reason the jokes are able to succeed is the amazing supporting cast. The men in this movie don’t get as much to do as the women, but there were a couple of good male performances nonetheless. Jake Johnson and Ludacris play Ashton’s best friends. Johnson isn’t someone I knew coming in, but he had a kind of cross between Mark Ruffalo and one of Adams Sandler’s sidekicks thing going on. He got a decent bit of subplot and managed to handle it very well. I’d like to see some more stuff from him working in the sidekick milieu. Ludacris got less to do comparatively, but he has a very affable on screen charisma. He didn’t come off as out of place at any point during his screen time and I think somebody will give him a shot at a bigger role after this. Also, Cary Elwes nearly disappears into a very small role as a doctor, and just picking him out behind his beard and glasses made me happy. Where has he been?
And in addition to the supporting males generally delivering, it’s with the female supporting cast where this film really gets a chance to shine. All of the female characters in this film feel like distinct people with their own, well-defined personalities. None of them exist just as an object of obtainment for the men in the film. That is a very rare thing in today’s movie landscape and it feels refreshing to watch. Greta Gerwig and Mindy Kaling play two of Portman’s roommates, and for once the female roommate characters exist as something other than a Greek chorus of male bashing and grabbing tissues. Gerwig brings a sweetness and maturity to her small role that enriches it beyond what’s on the page. Kaling manages to rise above her associations from The Office as the annoying girl, and creates a snarky, yet likable character that feels like somebody you’d like to know. Olivia Thirlby gets about 30 seconds of screen time in total, but manages to be funny and make an impression with every second of her time. A girl who I wasn’t familiar with named Lake Bell plays one of the aforementioned show’s producers, and she really kills it later in the film when she gets a bit more play as a rival love interest for Ashton. A Googling of her reveals Children’s Hospital experience as well. Curiouser and curiouser.
That is what I liked about the film. What I’m not so keen on starts with the leads. Natalie Portman is an actress who has always been very hit or miss with me. When she’s in a good project with a good director I usually find her to be delightful. But when she seems to be cashing a paycheck, her performance really looks like she’s a girl trying to cash a paycheck. I didn’t get that sense here, but in this movie I felt like her performance was inconsistent from scene to scene. Largely that probably had to do with how the character was written, but a great, consistent performance could have created a more cohesive whole. The thing is, she really goes for the comedy; and she really pulls it off. Some people will be shocked at how good at the comedy Portman is. It pretty much seems like she came in this thing with an agenda to prove that she could pull off a comedic role, and her character comes off as a little coarse and unlikable in the process. She is the one who is completely against a traditional relationship. She is the one who has to be emotionally unavailable throughout the film. But in order to be on her side when she comes to her senses during the third act, we still have to be on board with her as being a good person. To achieve this she would have needed to show a twinge of regret now and then. She would have needed to project a little emotion bubbling beneath the surface. When the script calls for her to start getting emotional and be all girly she knocks it out of the park. You really buy into her pain and regret in that moment. But it comes as a shock. It doesn’t feel like the same character that she was playing five minutes earlier, who was doing nothing but getting laughs about how much of a dude she is about sex. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I wanted Ashton’s character to get with somebody else instead of her, but by the end of the film I definitely felt like it was a viable option. For a romance that is death.
And as far as Ashton goes: I have to admit that I’ve never liked Ashton. Even a little bit. Early on in this film there’s a scene where his character is a frat guy at a frat party. He’s dressed completely ridiculous and acting like a moron. It was decent parody, I was thinking to myself that maybe a film was finally going to skewer his annoying persona for comedy rather than showcase it as if it was something positive. That didn’t happen, but what I did get was a performance from Ashton that was more subdued than anything else I’ve seen him do in comedy. There is a bit of that classic Ashton shtick in there; some of his cutesy little boy act. Half of his repertoire is smiles, shrugs, and giggles. I often wonder when he’s going to stop trying to pull that “isn’t he cute and dumb like a puppy” thing off. When he’s forty? Is he forty? But really, he played most of this film straight. His character was an everyman, and that’s what he shot for. The problem was that in every scene he acted in he was surrounded by actors that just completely outclassed him in every way. He wasn’t bad, in most romantic comedies he would have fit in perfectly; but in a project that had such strong supporting work he just really stood out as being inadequate. This is probably the thing I’ve seen him do that I’ve tolerated him in most, and it is a bit encouraging to me about where his career could go if the world insists on keeping him around; but I’m still not sold on the idea of keeping him around at all.
Portman and Kutcher’s characters are really the only thing that separates the film from the rest of the pack when it comes to romantic comedies, but they don’t manage to separate the movie in a good way. They are playing the characters that are usually the jackass sidekicks, the comic relief. But here they get the A story and the more sensible, more likeable characters played by Johnson and Gerwig are relegated to the B tale. I would like to give the film credit for trying to kill the formula at least a little, but they aren’t as successful as could have been hoped. Often I was kind of just wishing that I could have been watching a movie about Johnson and Gerwig’s characters getting together, where at least not so many false conflicts would have to be created to keep things interesting. And apart from that, the film takes a long while to get itself moving. I was a good half hour into it before Ashton and Natalie’s “having a bunch of sex” montage happened. If it had spent that time meticulously setting up the characters, that would have been one thing, but by the time the two big stars finally get together everyone is only introduced as base personality traits. Also, Kevin Kline plays the role of Ashton’s egotistical, formerly famous father, and he feels like he’s acting in a different film from everyone else. It’s not that what he does is intrinsically not funny; it is just very much at odds with all of the other performances in the film. Everyone else is committed to playing their characters straight, where Kline chooses instead to create a slapstick monstrosity. Somebody should have sent him a memo.
