Review: "No Strings Attached" is a Slight Film with Beautiful Leads (and Absolutely Nothing Interesting to Say)

How can you tell that the provocative, but somewhat under-the-radar (at least to your grandparents) meme of "friends with benefits" or "f**k-buddies" has finally gone truly mainstream? They've made a big, splashy romantic comedy about it, starring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman.

Too bad it's such a slight, completely conventional movie. There are many, many interesting things to be said about the whole idea of emotion-free sex between friends (as almost any gay dinner party can attest!), but this movie doesn't really bother to say anything at all, except maybe, "Love sure is special!"

Instead, it relies almost entirely on the admittedly stunning beauty of its two leads to hold the audience's interest.

Adam and Emma are two acquaintances who've known each other ever since summer camp (when their characters are played by remarkable teen-age lookalikes). One night years later, Adam gets drunk and drunk-dials every woman he knows, searching for a booty-call. Finally, he gets Emma. Adam doesn't get lucky with Emma right away, but he does soon enough, and they discover that they have incredible sexual chemistry.

Why not just start dating? In a nice gender-reversal issue, Emma has major commitment issues. But Adam, being a guy, is more than happy to be used as a piece of meat, and they both agree that they'll keep going, screwing with absolutely no emotional commitment (or snuggling), until one of them falls in love with the other, in which case they'll call it off.

I bet you can't imagine where this is going to go next.

The good news is that Kutcher and his goofy-frat-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold persona proves to be surprisingly charming (he ain't bad to look at either, especially when seen naked from behind). Portman, meanwhile, is well-cast as a remote, aloof, high-achieving character that's also pretty close to her own public persona.

And a couple of scenes will inspire slight smiles. When Adam wakes up the morning after his bender in a strange apartment, one by one, Emma's roommates pretend to be the one he had sex with the night before — including a (stereotypical) gay male one (the movie also includes a couple of gay dads who go unseen until a brief clip in the closing credits).

But the movie is ultimately a seriously missed opportunity. As a romantic comedy, it doesn't say or do anything that hasn't been said and done a thousand times before. And frankly, I was surprised by how little actual story there is here: they decide to have sex without a relationship, but Emma has commitment issues ... and that's pretty much it. Given that I was watching a movie starring two of the most beautiful people on earth, I was surprised by how restless I was in my seat.

I probably shouldn't have been surprised. The director, Ivan Reitman, is responsible for a long string of stinkers, including Evolution, Six Days Seven Nights, and My Super Ex-Girlfriend (in fairness, he made his name on some early Bill Murray comedies, and he also directed the terrific Dave — and Kevin Kline has a small part in this movie too).

But the movie also completely misses the boat on its central premise. Can some people have sex without emotional attachment? Clearly, some people can, and it would've been nice to see this reflected in at least a minor sub-plot. How do these people do it? What exactly is it they do (or don't do)? The movie kind of begs for a gay best friend (although part of me is also relieved they didn't "go there," since that's almost too obvious; if the gay character had been atypical in other ways — like, say, Adam Samberg's gay lothario in I Love You, Man — maybe it could've worked).

This movie has the opposite, American-audience-pleasing take: sex without love is impossible. But even here they don't really have anything to say. What is it about sex that makes some people develop an emotional attachment? Indeed, despite the title, the movie isn't really even about the topic of "friends with benefits" at all: instead, it's just a movie about a relationship between a typical man and a very atypical woman with serious, mostly unexplained commitment issues.

There's a really interesting movie to be made about the whole issue of f**k-buddies. I hope someone makes it soon, because this one definitely isn't it.