January 22, No Strings Attached: 2 out of 5. Adam: I hate breakfast. Emma: Good. Another bogus premise for a rom-com that manages to be awkward, long, and poorly handled in the laugh department, despite having a number of talented supporting stars. You know where the film is going, and the journey getting there is kinda boring and fairly laugh free. It is nice that the film has some likable people in it, but having warm faces guide me through a bland movie still makes it a bad movie.
So Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman star as two people who casually meet each other over the course of several years. They seem compatible, but live fairly separate lives. Emma Portman is a doctor, working long hours, with no time for real relationships. One day, Adam discovers that his father, Alvin played by Kevin Kline, who is still acting apparently , is sleeping with his ex-girlfriend.
This prompts Adam to get very drunk and dial up all the girls in his phone. He wakes up the next morning to find himself naked, in the apartment of Emma and her roommates. While on the search for his missing pants, Adam and Emma have some quickie sex, soon deciding that this could be something they do more often — become sex friends.
This would mean having casual sex, but without actually being in a relationship. No complications there! And we all know the rest…. The supporting cast includes the aforementioned Kevin Kline somehow registering as unlikable , Cary Elwes who seems to have put on a beard and a doctor coat, then stumbled around the set for a couple days , along with talented, indie movie actresses Greta Gerwig and Olivia Thirlby, as well as familiar faces such as Mindy Kaling The Office and Lake Bell.
Oh, and Ludicrous is in this movie too. So basically, there is a fairly talented cast of people here, and they do what they can with some of the one-liners they get. Unfortunately, a lot of times, everything just feels very uneven compared to what the results could have been. For some reason, this film was directed by Ivan Reitman. Reitman has made comedy classics such as Ghostbusters and Stripes , but has now ended up here. I point this out, because it is as if these guys have lost some sense of their comic sensibilities.
