No acting attached

Rating: 3/10 (27 April 2011)

The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should give their awards conditionally. If you receive an Academy Award for best actor/actress, and then demean it by acting poorly in a subsequent film, you should forfeit the award. This is akin to behaving in a manner unbecoming a professional. Now, I wasn't a big fan of Black Swan, but I did think Natalie Portman deserved the Best Actress award. After watching No Strings Attached, I wonder if I, and others, had been fooled. Admittedly, she didn't have much of a script to work with here in No Strings. At best, her character was two dimensional. But then, she was one of the producers. You'd think she would have been able to tell a flawed script when she saw one.
Like most romantic comedies, you know the ending from the first scene in the movie. This, however, does not mean the film or script is necessarily bad. After all, you know the salesman will die before you even watch Death of a Salesman. It's how you get to that ending that has to be interesting. And in No Strings Attached, that journey is tedious.
Ashton Kutcher, rapidly evolving into the Hugh Grant of American romcoms, plays his usual sensitive, cute but naughty puppy dog role. He basically serves as the eye candy for the female viewers. This is too bad because, as we saw in The Butterfly Effect, he does have talent. Both he and Portman's character lack depth and we can't help but wonder what he sees in her that's so special. No chemistry exists between them or any of the other actors in this film. So there is no romance in this romantic comedy and, what comedy there is, is sophomoric. I am sure that a few 13-year-olds were rolling in the aisles, but that might just be from eating a bad hot dog, which would certainly have been more enjoyable.
I heard that Portman wanted this movie to be the female answer to The Hangover. Personally, I'd prefer a five alarm hangover to watching this movie again.