At the risk of sounding like an old-fashioned stick in the mud, here's a confession. No Strings Attached - a frank, uncensored and undoubtedly honest comedy about sexual attraction in the 21st century - had me longing for the days when Hollywood starlets suggestively spoke of the beast with two backs. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell or Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn would titillate moviegoers by slinging wittily crafted and well-timed double entendres. Saying less actually generated more on-screen sexual tension.
No Strings, like many of its contemporary counterparts, flips the equation. Its characters hold nothing back when engaged in a carnal courtship. The mouth simply blurts out whatever the brain thinks ... and if it fits into a 140-character Tweet, all the better. George Cukor and Billy Wilder reserved the most observant, sexually-charged dialogue for foreplay, when the audience still wondered, "Will they or won't they?" There's none of that apprehension in No Strings because we don't have time to wonder. Our protagonists hop into bed before we even dig into our popcorn. Since they don't necessarily wait to get to know each other, their first meaningful conversation takes place the morning after doing the deed, when she tells him he has "a nice penis." Put it this way: No Strings is a comedy made for fans of Adam Sandler, not for fans of Adam's Rib.
The "she" I just mentioned is Emma (Natalie Portman), while the "him" is Adam (Ashton Kutcher). They've known each other since they were children who attended the same summer camp, which just means Adam has been trying to jump Emma's bones for decades. She finally allows him into her bed when their paths cross years later. Emma's a workaholic medical student who needs physical stimulation without the emotional baggage that comes with love. Adam's all for it, so they attempt a purely physical relationship with, as the title suggest, no strings attached.
Ivan Reitman, who directs, issues screenwriter Elizabeth Meriwether with a near-insurmountable challenge: Make us care about a couple who spends the bulk of the movie denying any feelings they might have for each other. Her solution is to largely ignore Emma and Adam so she can distract us with the comically strange but clichéd supporting cast that float in and out of their artificial universe.
Here, Reitman and Meriweather benefit from strong casting choices. Mindy Kalling (NBC's "The Office"), Greta Gerwig (Greenberg) and Lake Bell embrace Meriwether's filthy dialogue, though Gerwig probably missed Noah Baumbach's clever prose when she was asked to complain about her menstrual cycle by saying, "It's like a crime scene in my pants." Even the great Kevin Kline, who once collaborated with Reitman on Dave, is asked to slum in the No Strings gutter to play Kutcher's dad, a one-time TV star who uses his celebrity to "eat the kitty" of much-younger girls (usually ones that used to date his on-screen son).
But the plot must keep it clicking, right? Actually, no. Strings is kind of all over the place. There's a scene early in the film where Emma invites Adam to an undisclosed "thing" she needs to attend the next day, and because he's interested in her, he agrees without asking questions. It's a quick setup to a visual laugh where Kutcher, unprepared, stands at a burial ceremony wearing bright yellow University of Michigan apparel while everyone else - Portman included - is cloaked in reverent black clothing. But stop for a moment and ask, "Is this Emma's father's funeral?" (Because that's what's implied.) Did she actually invite a date to her own dad's burial? And was she really at a frat party the night before she was going to put her father in the ground?
Despite my complaints, it's worth noting that No Strings isn't a total tumble into immaturity, primarily because Portman and Kutcher - while never actually funny - do manage to sell the emotional relationship in the film's final minutes. Reitman also understands enough about comedic timing to keep No Strings from devolving into, say, Year One territory. It has a handful of memorable comedic set pieces and more quotable one-liners than anticipated. It just needs a few more invisible strings to tie its disconnected scenes and crass observations together into a cohesive movie.
