REVIEW: Actions Speak Louder Than Dirty Words in No Strings Attached

It's all just too cute for words, and more's the pity. Because in the end, No Strings Attached is more meaningful for what it does rather than for what it says along the way. Reitman -- the director behind boisterously off-color '80s comedies like Stripes, as well as the more benign but no less beloved Ghost Busters -- is trying to make a picture that reflects the way young people tumble into relationships today, which perhaps isn't all that different from how they tumbled into them 30 or 40 years ago. Even though the ideal is to fall deeply in love before having sex, it hardly ever happens that way, and certainly not with Emma and Adam. The movie's most affecting, and most explicit, moment is the one in which the two hustle through their first sexual encounter so Emma can get to work on time. The camera moves in close, almost uncomfortably so, aware of everything each is trying to hide from the other; it captures the futility of their denial, as well as the absurd, reckless joy of the moment. "Hey, we're having sex!" says one. "I know!" says the other.

The rest of No Strings Attached is far less subtle: There's lots of raw, wink-wink, nudge-nudge dialogue, as if the picture were trying to be the Facebook version of Chaucer. But the performers seem constrained by all this forced ribaldry, not freed by it; their seemingly offhand quips jump out at us, rather than blending in as believable, real-life speech.

That's a shame, because Reitman is onto something here, and he's definitely in tune with his young actors. He's also taken great care -- or at least had terrific luck -- in casting. The supporting performers here are nearly all wonderful, from Ludacris, as one of Adam's buddies and the barkeep at his favorite local watering hole, to Mindy Kaling, as one of Emma's no-nonsense doctor roommates, to Lake Bell, as Adam's high-strung (and lovestruck) boss. And it's a stroke of genius to cast Greta Gerwig -- the heart of Noah Baumbach's Greenberg -- as an M.D. Her character is the sort of woman who beams radiantly when a guy unexpectedly holds a car door open for her, but you suspect she'd also know just what to do when confronted with a patient complaining of chest pain. Gerwig's space-case sense of timing gives her an air of mystery rather than predictability: Someone needs to cast her in a screwball comedy about a seemingly ditzy Nobel prize-winning genius.

No Strings Attached does have more than its share of dum-dum moments and plot twists, including the betrothal of Emma's sister (played by a sadly underused Olivia Thirlby) as a device to reinforce how emotionally blocked Emma is. Who needs that? Just let your actors act. And Portman is perfectly capable here. Now that Portman has become a big star, the window for doing comedy is closing in on her, but I hope she'll do more. While her line delivery too often rings with the shrillness of a nice girl talking dirty, she still has plenty of charming, offhanded moments, particularly when she assesses Adam's penis (alas, we don't get to see it) and observes, with obvious approval, that it looks "kinda carefree."

It's possible that Kutcher loosens her up. That may be one of Kutcher's great gifts: He can, apparently, loosen anyone up. Kutcher is one of those actors who may, for the whole of his career, be just bubbling under. Maybe someday he'll give a big breakthrough performance, playing a death-row prisoner who's proven innocent via DNA testing or a football player, loving dad and model citizen who's dying of cancer. I sure hope he doesn't: Though I wish him success and the chance to make many more movies, I like him the way he is, throwing away his total adorableness as if he were Ingrid Bergman in Saratoga Trunk, being told she's beautiful and laughing, "Yes! Isn't it lucky?"

Kutcher always acts as if his being great-looking is just a starting point, not an ending. (I have particular fondness for a highly imperfect movie he did with the late, great Bernie Mac, the 2005 Guess Who, in which he played the hapless white guy hoping to marry Mac's daughter. This was a romantic comedy in which the real romance was between Kutcher and Mac, hating each other at first and eventually realizing they'd be lost without each other.) Kutcher has the ability to appear genuinely pleased when another character plays him a compliment. At one point Lake Bell burbles something about how beautiful he is, and the look that crosses his face suggests both modest acceptance of this compliment and dismissal of it. He's only human, and who doesn't like to be told he's attractive? At the same time, he knows that life isn't long enough to just coast through.

And being great-looking is probably a lot more fun when you're a big goofball, as Kutcher so readily is. He seems more at ease with the movie's tamer dialogue, some of which actually sounds improvised. (Might it have been?) Note, for example, the scene in which he watches Emma shovel pancakes into her mouth and remarks, "You eat like a baby dinosaur." Forget all the movie's allegedly candid lines about blow jobs and crotch rubs. Adam's random breakfast observation tells us more about his character, and about his carnal affection for Emma, than all the rest of the movie's garden-variety naughty patter. It's also, for what it's worth, a lot more likely to get him laid.

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