When action movies aren’t active, I blame the director
Seven Days
Seven Days
- ROOTING FOR ROMANCE Kutcher offers his “sex friend” Portman an appropriate bouquet in Reitman’s romantic comedy.
When comedies aren’t very funny, I blame the writer. The problem is, it’s hard to know exactly whom to blame. Beneath a single writing credit can lurk a roomful of script doctors – and marketers – who contributed to turning the final product into a let’s-please-everyone muddle.
Such is the case of No Strings Attached , a busy, overstuffed romantic comedy that aims enough jokes at enough demographics that some of them hit the mark. So many funny people do so many sort-of-funny things in this R-rated saga of two “friends with benefits” that genre fans may come out satisfied. For my money, it’s more of a misfire.
The single credited screenwriter is Elizabeth Meriwether, a twentysomething Yale graduate with bona fides in the New York theater: In the Times , the director of one of her plays called her “the whip-smart next-generation alternative to groundbreaking male writers like Chris Durang, Woody Allen and Judd Apatow.”
So I guess we can give Meriwether credit for the opening of the movie, which comes off like an absurdist version of When Harry Met Sally. When Adam (Ashton Kutcher) meets Emma (Natalie Portman) at summer camp, he requests permission to finger her. She declines. Their next encounter finds them in college, where she asks him on a date . to her father’s funeral.
Their third encounter is equally awkward; their fourth involves a depressed Adam making a mass booty call. But when he and Emma do fall into bed, almost randomly, the awkwardness disappears. They may not exactly be “friends,” or have anything in common – he’s an easygoing aspiring TV writer; she’s a workaholic doctor – but they do enjoy the benefits of their casual hookups.
It’s an interesting enough premise for a rom com, especially because Emma is the one who shuns commitment – relationships make her “weird and scary,” she says. Read more