No matter how you like No Strings Attached, the latest rom-com on the block, it seems like Hollywood's really tried all combinations of the genre. Yet another of those assembly line films that studios have to regularly dish out, the only thing that separates this one from the rest is the inversion of the genre and that's not talking much.
Emma (Natalie Portman) is an emotional wreck who calls her father's funeral one of those stupid things. Adam (Ashton Kutcher) is a guy who seems to be forever feeling sad with something or the other in his life. The two have been orbiting each other's space since childhood but eventually end up sleeping together the morning after Adam makes as ass of himself in front of Emma's roomies. Adam's father (Kevin Kline), a has been actor with one great line to his credit, is now dating his nymphet of an ex-girlfriend and Emma, a doctor in the making is doing her residency, they decide that being friends with benefits is the only future possible between them. Adam has a loser friend who keeps giving him wrong advice, Emma's best friend can't understand why she can't 'date' Adam who seems like a perfectly find catch as opposed to hers who steal her credit cards and then there's Emma's clean-cut good looking fellow resident doctor colleague who mocks Adam at every step. Soon cracks start appearing in the strict code of conduct that Emma and Adam agreed upon but unlike the usual it's Adam who falls for Emma.
No Strings Attached is about two people who could be anyone and the man behaving like a woman and the woman being like a tough man is the only deviation from the regular. Does that work? Not really. For starters there isn't any real reason for Emma to be the relationship-phobe that she is and even though one can be the way they are for no real reason she wears her no non-sense attitude like an id tag. You see reservations on her face long before even Adam remotely suggests something and Adam plays the troubled teenager who just refuses to grow up. This is just one of the things that make it difficult to find an emotional core, something that can work wonders for a rom-com or why else does every rom-com remind you of When Harry Met Sally!
Like a hundred of such films the moment the lead pair has sex one of the has to feel more than lust and here it’s Adam who feels the love long before he even gets out of the room. Emma doesn’t look beyond the half hour she’s with Adam for she slogs 80 hours a week and just needs someone who can respond to her text message to home deliver passion. Adam has a lost pup look right from the time you see him and that’s that. The film has one-liners you don’t really laugh at, the supporting cast as regular as a bottle manufacturing plant so they don’t really try to pitch in beyond the expected and the lead look their part. Close on the heels of Black Swan Portman does a 180 degree turn with her pretty cold, career woman who doesn’t- have-time-for-falling-in-love-and-then-collecting-the-pieces-post-break-up number but looks angry for some reason. And Kutcher is, well…just himself only quieter.
Depending on how you look at things the premise of No Strings Attached works on extremes- either you will love it or it just won't make any sense. The film looks and feels more verbal than most in the genre but that could be because of the fact that it's directed by someone who is 65 years old. Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Twins and Six Days, Seven Nights) tries to make No Strings Attached cerebrally different from the rest but it ends up being flat and even senseless in places. One of the biggest 'Hollywood' directors of the 1980's, Reitman tries to go European and at many places keeps the proceedings poker straight to convey a sense of realism like the scene where Adam and Emma get it on for the first time. He builds the scene up to the point where you are expecting the two to get naked and get going and when after much probing they get around it he just doesn't cut away till they are almost done. You are made to see their rather blank and perhaps even embarrassed faces for eternity and you are made to feel the gyrations that are happening off screen, of course, and you are expected to feel the passion if not the love. Chances are you won’t.
Rating: 2/5
Cast: Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Kline
Written by: Elizabeth Meriwether
Directed by: Ivan Reitman
Image: hollywood.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment