Review of No Strings Attached (2011) by Shiira — 01 Feb 2011

"Don't...ever...stop f*cking me!" Who could ever forget those immortal words coming out of Kelly Preston's mouth in Cameron Crowe's "Jerry Maguire"? Avery, Preston's character, uninhibited and brassy, the classy woman that Dorothy Boyd(Renee Zelwegger) figures her boss' hypothetical lover to be, convinces the moviegoer that she's having the best sex ever.

That lusty battle cry, over the passing years, has supplanted "Show me the money!" and perhaps, even "You complete me," as the film's most quotable line. The titular character is completing her, all right, so to speak, in the most carnal sense of the word.

But who's completing the sports agent with the newly-formed conscience? Not Avery. Hypnotized by the sideview of Preston's wildly bouncing breasts, people often have a hard time recalling what Tom Cruise says next.

Quite tellingly, Jerry replies, "Sooner or later, we'll have to stop." As it turns out, this would turn out to be the more important of the two epiphanies. Despite being in the throes of passion, the sports agent somehow intuits that their love is nothing more than a facade; that the sex, albeit vigorous, ultimately, has no meaning outside of pleasure, and sure enough, when their love is put to the test, the truth comes out.

The strings attached to this love affair aren't heartstrings; they're status-related strings, vulnerable to snap at the slightest provocation. Jerry and Avery are a power couple; in essence, f*ck buddies, who used each other as mirrors, until one of the mirrors cracked.

On a subconscious level, as Avery "sat" in her lover's lap, Jerry had realized that sex wasn't enough, so "sooner or later", just like he said, they would have to go their separate ways, whereas Emma(Natalie Portman), in the surprisingly decent rom-com "No Strings Attached", wants her boy-toy Adam(Ashton Kutcher) to stop f*cking her and start seeing other people, because love, the very thing our hearts and minds crave like cough syrup, is too much for her.

The contract they had agreed to, which governs and formalizes their libertine actions, gets seriously breached when the sex starts to mean something. This sex, we presume, must be award-winning sex, though it's impossible to gauge, since the filmmaker condenses the bulk of the non-couple's extra-curricular activities into a snappy montage, presumably on account of Portman's reluctance to do nudity.

So what we get is implied sex, all tell and no show, and that's a pity, because a lot of "No Strings Attached" is extremely appealing, thanks to a bevy of excellent supporting players. Best of all, the film understands how technology created this monster; this young woman who fears intimacy and seems incapable of giving and receiving love.

Emma, who seems more comfortable with indirect communication, pushes Adam to his wit's end with her endless e-mailing and texting, inspiring the son of a shameless womanizer(played by Kevin Kline) to implore the woman he loves to get in her car and see him.

"No Strings Attached" gets a lot of little things right, but where sex is involved, the film whiffs, big time. Somebody sorely needs to fake an orgasm; somebody needs to use sex as a weapon, and hurt the other person.

When Adam protests that he doesn't like his penis being described as cute, he could very well be talking about the entire movie in general. For example, Adam gives Emma a mix tape, a collection of thematic songs dedicated to period blood, her menstrual cycle, which is cute, but this intern, this future doctor who balks at girly things like flowers and balloons, and a second straw in an ice cream soda, doesn't seem the type to be won over by such a silly gesture.

For all her talk about monogamy being against our basic biologies, we never see Emma actually practicing what she preaches. There's another guy in the picture, a colleague at her hospital, and Adam is jealous of him, but it's unclear as to whether Emma is shagging him too.

Probably not. He drives a Prius. Again, it all comes down to Portman; she hampers the film with her reluctance to put out for the camera.