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Director: Ivan Reitman
Writer(s): Elizabeth Meriwether (screenplay), Michael Samonek (story)
Starring: Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher
Rated R
Movie details on IMDB
Julie's Rating: st

Rating Guide

No Strings Attached

I have to begin by saying that I was completely confused by this movie. The problem is that I swear, I swear on a stack of Bibles, that I read some description of this movie that stated Natalie Portman's character has early-onset Parkinson's disease. Let me be the first to tell you, there is no disease in this movie.

What is in this movie is lots of pretty people. I've been trying to figure out who this movie was made for, and the only thing I can come up with is that it is for people who live in L.A. who want to believe that there may still be a good-hearted person left in the world.

No Strings Attached is the story of Adam and Emma (why didn't they just name her Eve and get it over with?) who first meet at summer camp, then bump into each other again in college, then bump into each other again after college, then bump into each other ... well, you get the picture.

Adam is your typical guy in most ways. He's totally hot (hello, this is Ashton Kutcher, people) but has a big ol' heart that is filled up with Emma from the get-go. But he is also human and able to have other relationships during the years that he doesn't see or know Emma.

Emma, on the other hand, is 100% devoted to not falling in love. She has a more-than-healthy sexual appetite and convinces Adam to have a "no strings" affair with her. Friends with benefits, you get the drift. Oh, but one of the rules is that the minute one of them starts having "feelings" then the arrangement ends. See where this is going?

The best part of the movie, for me personally, was the ridiculously-obvious product placement ads for Stella Artois, which happens to be my favorite beer. I am drinking one right now to commemorate the awesome scenes when Ashton and his friends were drinking lots and lots of them. It almost brought tears to my eyes. Which is the closest I came to crying in this predictable, vacuous monstrosity of a Valentine's Day marketing ploy. I guess after Portman got done torturing herself through Black Swan, she needed something soft and easy, like a million sex scenes with Ashton. I really can't blame her. I can only blame myself for getting suckered out of $7.50 to endure 108 minutes of going nowhere fast.

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