Movie review: "No Strings Attached"

Yesterday my girlfriend and I watched "No Strings Attached", a romantic comedy with Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman. We try to avoid sleazy teen comedies, so we pick only those with stars included. My friends, on the other hand, when they watch such movies (which is not often), don't use this "method of filtering", so results often vary much.

So, Ashton Kutchers play Adam, a young man, some kind of movie assistant, easygoing, cheerful and sensitive. Natalie Portman is Emma, a medical student with tight schedule and no liking for relationships. They have met briefly several times in past, always feeling something but never doing anything. Until one night when Adam gets drunk and accidentally ends sleeping in Emma's apartment. Since then they will start a purely sexual relationship, with rules made by Emma that will keep things simple. Of course, at first things go smoothly, but slowly Adam will find that he has more feelings for Emma. Emma, on the other hand, has fear of relationships, but she will also realize that she is not completely immune to Adam's care and happiness. But how long will he be able to fight against her fears...

Not to drag this, this is a typical romantic comedy. Introduction, happy part, sad part, happy ending, all crisscrossed with humor. I like this concept, and shorter the sad part, happier me. It has a nice kind of humor, based a lot on sexual jokes, but nothing crass and no nudity - a kind of humor you would expect from big stars that also act in serious films (well, this is true more for Portman than for Kutcher). It has weird, but funny friends, and even a bad guy. Acting is solid and movie actually gets more serious than I expected based on the beginning.

So, in short, "No Strings Attached" is a nice romantic comedy which will not disappoint if this is what you expect and want. A good evening watch that doesn't ask much of you.