Photo by:
The first romantic comedy of 2011 happens to be the first movie worth seeing this year. The title, “No Strings Attached,” creates very simple, straightforward, cliché expectations for the film’s plot.
However, the film is at its best with the awkwardly, perfect, comedic chemistry between award-winning actress Natalie Portman (“Black Swan”) and rom-com veteran, Ashton Kutcher.
Portman plays Emma, an overachieving, single woman who is completely absorbed by her 80-hour doctor workweek.
Needless to say, she does not have time for a relationship and Portman says she just, “needs someone that is going to be in her bed at 2 a.m. that she doesn’t need to have breakfast with.”
Enter Adam, an acquaintance from Emma’s past that she originally met at summer camp when she was a teenager and bumped into on a couple of other occasions throughout her life.
The story centers itself around the heartfelt comedy from the romantic relationship that forms between these two while exploring the realms of their solely sexual relationship.
The best part of the film is the realistic relationship that forms between Emma and Adam. Portman and Kutcher create this relationship through fluent carefree exchanges of dialog along with very comedic, personalized, sensual romance scenes. By doing this, the couple onscreen seems to have been taken from real footage of a couple and their goofy antics together instead of staged romantic comedy.
Another very important thing that the film has going for it is the entertainment factor. The film is able to break out of the romantic comedy genre ever so slightly in order to become a comedy that a wider adult audience can enjoy.
This is achieved with the help of the supporting characters in the film including Emma’s best friend Patrice (Greta Gerwig), Emma’s sister Katie (Olivia Thirlby) and Adam’s father Alvin (Kevin Kline).
Each of them is involved in a different kind of romantic relationship of their own, therefore, setting reference points for Emma and Adam’s chaotic relationship. Although not necessarily good reference points, they add to the comedy in this chaotic story about how sex turns into love.
