Listen, let's just make this quick: No Strings Attached is not Natalie Portman's Norbit. Don't let anybody tell you differently. Of course, they won't tell you per se -- they'll ask or insinuate or poll (or offer some epic, perverse combination of the three), pretending to be on the forward edge of a significant moral-cultural quandary that will define this year's Oscar race for Best Actress, advancing and attempting to rationalize a conversation with no rational foundation in the first place. We're better than this, folks, and now is the time to eradicate this non-issue from the Oscar 2010 books.
I know the temptation, believe me. We can talk about Justin Timberlake bristling at the specter of Yogi Bear in his would-be Supporting Actor campaign for The Social Network, and we can sniff all we want for the effluvia wafting from likely Best Actor nominee James Franco's medieval-slacker comedy Your Highness (co-starring Portman as well, but one thing at a time). And we can of course escalate such conversations to Def-Con levels as they pertain to Portman, the actual front-runner (in most estimations) to win this year's Best Actress prize for Black Swan -- assuming the Academy's actors branch isn't motivated to vote otherwise because of her upcoming BFF-sex farce No Strings Attached, co-starring the not-quite-estimable Ashton Kutcher, directed by Ivan Reitman and opening wide Jan. 21. As in, four days before nominations are announced:
Fine. We'll see if it's any good. But No Strings Attached is not the point, just as Yogi Bear and Your Highness and, as in Sandra Bullock's case in 2009, All About Steve are not the point. Despite what you've heard, the Academy is not strictly a reactionary bunch of blue-haired aesthetes who say, "Ah, well, Natalie Portman, romcom... Enh, here you go, Annette Bening." The point is that there is no such thing as "So-and-So's Norbit." The phenomenon does not -- cannot -- actually exist outside the individual who gave us that appellation in the first place. To wit, there is only one Norbit because there is only one Eddie Murphy.
With this in mind, I'm with the Norbiters to a point. After all, we can all agree Eddie Murphy left an indelible mark on the Academy Awards. And he did so without winning a damn thing, skulking out of the Kodak Theater in 2007 after presumably finishing second to Alan Arkin in that year's Best Supporting Actor contest. And why? Because Murphy's performance in Dreamgirls was qualitatively inferior to Arkin's turn in Little Miss Sunshine? Sort of, but no. Because Murphy is among the surliest, least-liked stars in a town crawling with surly, little-liked stars? Maybe, but not really. Because he strapped on a fat suit and starred in one of the most revolting, patronizing mainstream "comedies" of the last decade, which happened to open around the time Oscar voters were casting their ballots?
Yes.
You could technically argue she has yet to pay her career dues (I guess; she's been at this for nearly 20 years), but that's no one's determination to make besides individual voters'. And do any of us who take the Oscars remotely seriously really think a single actor will be gazing at his/her Best Actress ballots, chewing on the end of a pen, thinking, "Yeah, you know, Portman really blew me away in Black Swan -- physically, emotionally, dynamically... But man, then there's this Ivan Reitman thing all these really sophisticated bloggers can't stop talking about... I dunno..."
Come on. Come on. Stop the madness. No Strings Attached is not Natalie Portman's Norbit. Nothing is, nothing can be, nothing will be. Moving on...