Roger Ebert's poisoned pen is alive and well (No Strings Attached)

*I could just sit and bask in the way Roger turns a phrase. And lo! I do.*

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110119/REVIEWS/110119982


*Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman.*

 No Strings Attached

 * BY ROGER EBERT / * January 19, 2011

 "No Strings Attached" poses the question: Is it possible to regularly have
> sex with someone and not run a risk of falling in love? The answer is yes.
> Now that we have that settled, consider the case of Emma (Natalie Portman<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Natalie%20Portman&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>)
> and Adam (Ashton Kutcher<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Ashton%20Kutcher&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>),
> who first met when they were 6 and now meet when they're maybe 26. Busy
> people. He's a low-rent TV producer and she's a medical student. She doesn't
> have time for romance, and he's dating the sexy Vanessa (played by the
> well-named Ophelia Lovibond).
>
> Still, one must do something about sex, lest the pipes run rusty, as my
> friend Henry Togna Sr., the London hotelier, instructed me when he was in
> well into his 70s. Adam and Emma see each other at a party, remember each
> other after all those years, yet do not realize they're having a Meet Cute.
> Then Adam discovers Vanessa has dumped him and moved in with his father (Kevin
> Kline<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Kevin%20Kline&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>).
> In response, he begins to drink, which is what the Jack Lemmon<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Jack%20Lemmon&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>character always did in these situations, and what with one thing and
> another, he wakes up naked in Emma's apartment while she and three roommates
> reassure him they're all interns and deja vu when it comes to viewing the
> male netherlands on display.
>
> Is there something a little, I dunno, dated about a comedy where a guy
> clutches a towel to his privates while girls giggle at him? And when he asks
> if he slept with anyone last night, why does that remind me of Doris Day<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Doris%20Day&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>in “Where Were You When the Lights Went Out" (1968)? Here is a titillating
> sex romp in 2011, when the very words titillating and romp have outlasted
> their shelf lives. The movie is rated R, but it's the most watery R I've
> seen. It's more of a PG-13 playing dress-up.
>
> Anyway, finding out he hasn't slept with Emma, Adam engages in sitcom
> badinage that quickly leads to the old rumpy-pumpy, and they find the pipes
> running marvelously clear. What a discovery! They can have sex and remain
> just friends! This is a great convenience. They proceed to frolic like two
> bunnies in clover, using their cell phones and texting skills to arrange
> emergency trysts in roughly anything except a bed.
>
> All of this is fun while it lasts. Then the wheels of Hollywood morality
> begin to grind. There was a time when the very premise of this film would
> have been banned, but times change, and now characters can do pretty much
> anything as long as they don't get away with it. Although “No Strings
> Attached" might have been more fun if Adam and Emma had investigated the
> long-term possibilities of casual sex, it is required that the specter of
> Romantic Love raise its ominous head. Are they ... becoming too fond? Emma
> suggests they try sleeping with others so, you know, they won't get too hung
> up on each other. If you've ever seen a romantic comedy you know how that
> works. Experience shows that not sleeping with others is the foolproof way
> of not getting too hung up, etc.
>
> This is a strange film. Its premise is so much more transgressive than its
> execution. It's as if the 1970s never happened, let alone subsequent
> decades. Emma and Adam aren't modern characters. They're sitcom characters
> allowed to go all the way like grown-ups.
>
> As the wheels of the plot creak and groan, we're like kids in the back
> seat, asking, “Are we there yet?" Some diversion is supplied by the subplot
> involving Adam's dad Alvin (Kline), an aging television star trapped forever
> in his own misspent youth. Alvin is a dedicated hedonist, which Vanessa
> finds to her liking, because hedonists are always happy to pay, one way or
> another, for their hedonism, and Vanessa is happy to be paid, one way or
> another.
>
> Natalie Portman<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Natalie%20Portman&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>is perhaps about to win an Academy Award for “Black Swan." Why she helped
> produce this I cannot say. Ambitious actors usually do dreck like this in
> order to be able to afford to make a movie like “Black Swan." All the same,
> she does what she can; she has an edge, aggressive timing, and impressive
> enthusiasm for sex romping.
>
> Of Ashton Kutcher<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Ashton%20Kutcher&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>,
> I have less to say. He seems to be a very nice guy, a little too large for
> agile romping and still too young for the Brendan Fraser<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Brendan%20Fraser&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>role. When I saw him in “The Butterfly Effect" (2004), I registered that he
> could act, but in this material, he's essentially just the Male Unit. There
> is no character there.
>


Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |

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