Thoughts on No Strings Attached
-Because airbrushed Natalie Portman is no Natalie Portman of mine.-For once, a movie that must rely on the charms of its female cast. Mindy Kaling, Greta Gerwig, and Olivia Thirlby are wasted, but make the most of it, as second-bananas to Natalie Portman who, as funny as she is here, is too adorable for me to buy as a cynic. I wanted the entire movie to be about them and Guy Branum. And then, of course, there's Lake Bell, neurotic coworker of Ashton Kutcher's. Even Abby Eliot shows up to do a Drew Barrymore impression.
-This movie is fun. I mean, a lot of romantic comedies, are oppressively self-serious, gimmicky, sexist and stupid. This here...it knows it's limitations, a very confused Judd Apatow underling, but it's fun. Enough quirky sidekicks and frolicking about the city at night to make it entirely, utterly pleasant to watch on a plane.
-Here's what confounded me: I forget where exactly they all lived (I'll say LA or San Francisco), but it looked fairly swanky. So, Natalie Portman and Greta Gerwig and Mindy Kaling or Kapling or whatever (fuck, I don't feel like looking it up) and Guy Branum are all doctors sharing a nice, relatively small apartment. This, I buy. BUT, my loves, Ashton Kutcher's pussy-ass TV show assistant lives, with, apparently, one roommate or indeterminate occupation, lives in a motherfucking house, a motherfucking modern, art-deco, hooked-the-fuck-up house. I don't know if his dad (played by Kevin Kline, who my mother laments got so. old.) gives him an allowance or something, but shit.
-The clincher, the big profession of 'If I git you now, I ain't neva lettin' you go!' love, the one in this movie, set the entire theatre off in awwwww-ing hysterics. God. Dammit.
