Travel to the cinema recently? Then you’d be forgiven for thinking the projectionist had some sort of Natalie Portman fetish. If the American actress wasn’t in the film you paid to see, she would have at least been in 80 per cent of the coming attractions.

In that sense, No Strings Attached performs an important service, squaring away another Portman vehicle for which you no longer have endure the trailer. But how did it come to this? When did the little girl from Leon and Heat become 2011’s Katherine Heigl? A few months ago, Natalie Portman looked set to secure her place as the premier ‘serious’ actress of her generation. Now she’s flashing her buttocks and hangin’ with Mr Kutcher.

Not that you should be too hard on Josh Hartnett’s stand-in. Ashton Kutcher is actually the much more likeable half of the twosome that drives this high-concept, low-ambition rom-com. Under none other than director Ivan Reitman’s guidance, he’s lost his slack-shouldered arrogance and gained an almost humanlike sympathy. Which is more than can be said for Portman, who’s character verges on having a full-blown personality disorder (familiar fish, unfamiliar waters): she has to go down as one of the least likeable subjects in recent comedy history.

If you’ve seen the trailer – and no doubt you have – you’ll know the gist of No Strings Attached. Old acquaintances Paul (Kutcher) and Emma (Portman) decide to reframe their friendship in a physical sense, but without any of that pesky relationship stuff like love or commitment. Of course, it’s when you try to keep things uncomplicated that they turn into a personal minefield, as Paul and Emma soon find out.

The catch with No Strings Attached is that it’s Paul who wants something deeper. Emma, for no other reason than the fact she’s a nutjob, is scared of commitment. So, our two leads pirouette around each other as the predictable cast of best friends form the chorus line, offering loud-mouthed advice on sex in public places. It’s all disappointingly rote.

No Strings Attached seems to have a number of elements working at cross-purposes. It has plenty of zappy jokes, but they’re unspooled in a flat and dramatically halting manner, the film often feeling written around them. There’s also some annoying lip service paid to social networking, the foley artist working overtime to come up with all sorts of cellular alert tones. Reitman, too, seems to struggle with the tone of the piece, his instruction for all supporting actors to deliver their lines like Peter Venkman often making them seem like passive aggressive sociopaths.

You’d be hard pressed to truly hate No Strings Attached: there’s just not enough here to warrant such a strong reaction. But that cuts both ways, and you never really barrack for the central characters’ relationship either – it just doesn’t seem that important. There are funny moments scattered throughout the film, and you almost start cheering for Kutcher given that he makes such decent stab at drawing a real, sympathetic character. But No Strings Attached is cookie-cutter stuff, and you’d ultimately be better off staying at home and renting When Harry Met Sally.


I say: Romantic comedy by the numbers. No Strings Attached is just… ‘there’. Reitman should be doing better than this.

See it for: 120 minutes of pure, digestible mediocrity.