An Intimate Friendship

DVD Review: NO STRINGS ATTACHED
15 – 104mins – 2011
Written by: Elizabeth Meriwether
Directed by: Ivan Reitman
Starring: Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Kline, Lake Bell , Jake Johnson, Ludacris, Ophelia Lovibond, Greta Gerwig, Mindy Kaling, Cary Elwes
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As emotionally reserved lone wolf Dr. Emma Kurtzman, Natalie Portman plays a character on the opposite end of the personality spectrum to the fragile and clingy wallflower she played so masterfully (and won an Academy Award for) in Darren Aronofsky’s psychological ballet thriller Black Swan (read my rave review HERE).

But as frustrating as her distant, loveless outlook in No Strings Attached may be (she plays a shift-working nurse with no time for love who rejects all slivers of emotional attachment but is still up for the primal act of sack-jumping when the urge so strikes), Portman – along with amiable co-star Aston The Butterfly Effect Kutcher – manages to inject this “modern” story of sex-centric relationships with a surprising amount of charm.

I can’t abide the contemporary assumption that everyone living in the twenty-first century is so darn flippant about who they fuck, therefore I was initially concerned that Ivan Ghostbusters Reitman’s skewed rom-com-minus-the-rom would favour the raunchier aspect of this friends-with-benefits pairing over the deeper issue of why Emma is so adamant that her life is better off without love, but I was pleased that neither character was painted as an immoral whore who slept around with any Tom, Dick or Hairy (yes, that was a purposeful misspelling).

No Stings Attached mercifully took a more tender tact (outside of a few booty call montage sequences; but don’t expect anything too vulgar), and just to hammer home the point that romance still exists in this dishonest age, Kutcher’s Adam is the first to fall in love – see, men have feelings too! – while Emma continually spurns his advances outside the bedroom.

It’s a shame the plot becomes predictably twee as Emma’s heart belatedly beats to a passionate beat and everything ends far too happily in a nice neat idealistic Hollywood bow, but then there are an abundance of one dimensional cookie-cutter characters clichés outside of the likeable leads.


In a CR@B Shell: Inevitably optimistic climax aside, No Strings Attached is a surprising good-natured statement on the pros and cons of the modern view towards monogamy. It’s hard to see what more the upcoming Friends with Benefits (starring Portman’s Black Swan co-star Kunis) can contribute to this concept.
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Simply Irritating

DVD Review: WHEN IN ROME
PG – 87mins – 2010
Written by: David Diamond and David Weissman
Directed by: Mark Steven Johnson
Starring: Kristen Bell, Josh Duhamel, Will Arnett, Jon Heder, Dax Shepard, Danny Devito, Alexis Dziena, Kate Micucci, Bobby Moynihan, Anjelica Huston
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Unclouded by my unrequited teenage crush on Sarah Michelle Gellar, I can now truly appreciate how god-awful her whimsical 1999 romantic comedy Simply Irresistible is. A magical crab (no relation!!) enchants a struggling chef's culinary concoctions, charming the taste buds of a handsome big-shot executive, who hires her to cater an upcoming reception. Seriously, what the shell Buffy?!

Eleven years later and deja vu strikes: Kristen "Sarah Marshall" Bell, another adorable blonde kick ass Hollywood starlet who made her name in an iconic small screen role (Veronica Mars), has gone ahead and made a similarly flaky filmic faux pas. When In Rome is a woe-mantic chuckler showered in a sickly fantastical glaze.

Bell plays Beth Martin, an impossibly-still-single Guggenheim art curator who's married to her job after one too many dating disasters. That is until a trip to the city of lurrrrrrrve for her little sister's (Alexis Dziena) shotgun wedding leads a drunken and despairing Beth to pick coins from the "fountain of love" and consequently be hounded by the obsessively irrepressible suitors whose “wish for happiness” she has nabbed and now keeps in an ornamental bowl in her living room.

Will Arnett, Jon Heder, Dax Shepard and Danny Devito play the quintet of loser-droolers who follow Beth back home to NYC for a chance at her heart. They're all freakishly bizarre, unrealistically over-stylised and totally dislikeable, all except for suitor number five, that is: the charming and chiselled Nick Beamon (Josh Transformers Duhamel), who just so happens to be embarrassingly clumsy. I'm not entirely sure why, it certainly doesn't work if it's for comedic effect. There's no question of who Beth will fall for, but does Nick really love our cold-hearted curator, or is he spellbound until his coin is returned to the Roman fountain?

I know When In Rome isn't meant to be a taxing, head-scratching mystery, an epic love affair for the ages or a deep social satire of our times; not every film ever made has to be a masterclass in Oscar-baiting glory. Some films are simply made to entertain. Regrettably, When in Rome fails even at that: a lightweight and cutesy rom-com it may be, but I can't image even the easiest-to-please tweenager would be bewitched by this lame turkey of a misfire. Learn from my young and deluded ways, CR@B fans: no matter how easy on the eye the lead pair may be, this film is not simply irresistible

The “comedy” is juvenile and over-egged (Beth being unable to smash a ceremonial vase at the wedding; Nick's farcical bungling; an Italian mini being driven indoors like friggin' Brum!), the plot is achingly generic (one look at the poster/DVD cover-art will save you 87mins of your life) and the stereotypical characters so blatantly geared towards learning moralistic lessons that the whole thing feels excruciatingly contrived.


In a CR@B Shell: Ditzy, mawkish and so awkwardly unnatural that you're more likely to heave than fawn over this saccharine-sweet disaster. When in Rome, do as the Roman's (and the level-headed cinema-goers of the world) did and avoid this terrible, terrible flop.
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