"Love and Other Drugs", all "Spread" around.

Rating: 6/10 (21 February 2011)

Ivan Reitman, the director known for his long collaboration with Bill Murray, gave me enough reasons to worry about this flick only by the look of the trailer. No Strings Attached looked just like another cheap and average romantic comedy full of glam scenes and clichés. Is it the case here? Yes, it probably is. But something changed my judgment on this movie right after I left the theater. I said to myself: "wait a minute, this movie ain't that bad so I need to write about it as soon as I could". Well, here I am.
The film starts horrifying and amateurish. Nothing connects me with the characters, nothing impresses me, the jokes are so lame that even a true "blond" won't laugh at them, the pacing is incredibly boring and the clichés are falling like the "bieber-tears". I was obviously panicked. However, there was a point were things started to get better. The movie started to awake itself from the coma. Everything started to make sense again. I was breathing because the air was fresh. The film actually started to get entertaining. Well, thank god because that's what I was expecting from this. I expected a simple combo between "Love and Other Drugs" and Kutcher's other "playboy" film "Spread". This mixture is the perfect description this movie could have: "Love and Other Drugs, All Spread Around".
Basically the film is more than simple. Two friends, Emma (Natalie Portman) and Adam (Ashton Kutcher) become sex-buddies. Of course you know the twist here... C'mon guys... they fall in love. But that doesn't ruin anything because this is a great dating movie. There are a lot of goofy situations because you have Kutcher's same character, there are a lot of romantic moments which may seem to be similar or even identical to any other one thousand romantic moments which you all seen in other movies but that won't bother you because the execution is not wrong this time. So, you have the formula, you got the execution, what's next? The acting... While Kutcher does what he knows to do best, goofing around and run after girls, talk to the phone or eat a stake, Natalie Portman is too good for a movie like this. She gives a great performance even though it was not necessarily required. The emotions, the different emotional states, the delivery is better than I expected. That made me feel good and acknowledge that at least I could find interest in a character.
The technical execution is not something to be worry about so I won't talk about it since it's nothing special but I will admit though that the chosen songs were pretty good and they fitted the movie's identity. Excepting the first 20 minutes were everything was a complete chaos, a utterly mess, No Strings Attached starts horrifying but ends up more than satisfying. It's definitely a date film that I recommend. It's funny, cheesy, sweet to look at and strangely enough, innocent. Just don't hate on it.