Synopsis
When Adam’s girlfirend dumps him, things are bad. When Adam’s girlfriend ends up with his father, things are worse. To take out his loneliness and betrayal, Adam goes on a phone hunt for a ‘friend’ to get him through hard times. What Adam finds, after he awakes from his drinking escapade, is a friend with benefits in Emma (no pun intended). Can friends truly be ‘helpful pals’? That’s the question answered in No Strings Attached.
The concept for No Strings Attached was an interesting one. I’m not sure, at least to my knowledge, that this subject has actually been covered in modern day films. It’s very taboo, even in this day and age, but still very approachable when it comes to making a romantic comedy out of it. Ivan Reitman’s approach to ‘bed friends’ is interesting, as he clearly knows what he wants out of his characters. With Emma (played by Natalie Portman) he was looking for a cold and shallow character, which Portman played beautifully (probably thanks to her Star Wars role… I’m kidding). For Adam, he needed an actor that could nail the ‘sweet guy’ attitude and do his best not to wear his heart on his sleeve; he got this with Ashton Kutcher. So with two characters that seem to fit the bill perfectly what the heck went wrong? Well, the story got lost in a couple of areas.
The first hit that the story took was it forced our good-guy Adam into something that was completely out of character for him; he had to go from being brokenhearted to needing someone to sleep with. That was a bit unbelievable considering that he was established as someone likeable and not frat boy-ish. It was as if Reitman couldn’t figure out a solid solution with writer Elizabeth Meriwether and just needed something/anything to get Adam’s character into this main plot point situation where he sleeps with Emma. It was very awkward and extremely disjointed. (SPOILER ALERT) After that the movie rolls on pretty well until we get towards the ending, where each character predictably has some sort of feelings for the other. The movie had not established anything beyond the couple sleeping together to warrant feelings. What’s worse is that Portman’s Emma is so uncaring and cold that you can’t believe her icy heart melts enough to fall for Adam. There’s not enough progression in the middle of the story to draw this conclusion, but Reitman and crew seem to force it until the end. (SPOILER END)
So is there any redeeming value in the film? Well, it has some great moments that make it fun to watch, if you need something to watch on a Saturday night. The interaction between Portman and Kutcher is pretty solid (it’s too bad they don’t do more movies together) and the minor characters around them seem to bring some solid comedy as well. One of the better moments of the film is when Adam wakes up in Emma’s apartment for the first time and is naked and surrounded by her friends; it’s really a moment of solid, well-written comedy.
As for the Blu-ray portion of the film, the movie looked solid in HD. For some reason there were a lot of heavy blues and darker shades in the film, which isn’t typical for a comedy, but they all worked out when seeing this on a 1080p screen. There wasn’t any grain and there weren’t any artifacts to complain about. It was a very solid transfer to Blu-ray. The audio was equally as good, coming to you in 5.1 DTS-HD.
The features were really quite good, especially Reitman’s commentary. Here’s what you are looking at:
· Commentary with director Ivan Reitman
· Sex Friends: Getting Together
· Inside the Sassy Halls of Secret High
· Modern Love: The Do’s and Don’ts
· Deleted Scenes
· Alternate Storylines
I like what they included and especially liked the commentary. All of this fits the movie well and gives a bit more life to a movie that needed it.