It's a noble thing to make a movie that tries to capture the way real people speak. But how do you know how close you're getting? And even when you put raunchy turns of phrase or the most current slang in your characters' mouths, are you really capturing the reality of those characters' -- or of anyone's -- lives? Language is either a part of the landscape of a movie or it's window dressing, the first thing you notice. Can movie speech be believable and natural when it jumps out at us?
In Ivan Reitman's No Strings Attached, the language is part -- though not all -- of the problem, and time and again the script, by Elizabeth Meriwether (from a story by Meriwether and Michael Samonek), appears to be the major force that noses the movie's rhythms out of whack. The complication, though, is that nearly all the performers here -- not just the movie's two stars, Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman, but an array of likable and extremely well-cast second bananas -- seem to be having a good time, and their easy-going congeniality keeps the movie putting along, even through some extremely rough patches.
Kutcher and Portman play Adam and Emma, two young people making their way in Los Angeles with varying degrees of success: Emma -- an overachiever who admits that she's not particularly emotional or affectionate -- is a doctor; Adam -- irrepressibly warm and affable, if a bit goofy -- works as an assistant on a weekly teen-musical show, though he really wants to be a writer. Adam and Emma met years earlier, as kids at summer camp -- the movie opens with that flashback, in which young Adam (played by Dylan Hayes) fires the first of the movie's sexually explicit salvos when he asks Emma bluntly, "Can I finger you?"
She says no, of course, and as their paths cross repeatedly over the years (once while the two are attending different colleges; later when she drags him to her father's funeral as an unwitting date), Emma doesn't exactly become more yielding. Still, there's something about Adam she likes, though she won't admit it to herself. And no matter how many times she spurns him, Adam continues to be cautiously intrigued by her. So one fateful morning -- after Adam wakes up on Emma's couch, surrounded by her numerous fellow-doctor roommates, unable to recall what happened the night before -- they actually do have sex. Emma then presents him with a proposition: The two of them will get together for sex whenever they feel like it, but the moment one of them becomes too emotionally attached, the deal is off.
Adam agrees, though of course we know that since he's just a big mushbug, he'll be the one to cave in first. And sure enough, he shows up at Emma's apartment while she -- along with two of her roommates, played by Greta Gerwig and Mindy Kaling -- are all having their periods. Not only has he brought them cupcakes, which they descend upon with hormonally charged voraciousness; he's also made Emma a "period mix" CD, including obvious choices, like U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and less obvious ones, like Frank Sinatra's "I've Got the World on a String."
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.