No Benefits Included

It’s like that person that still lives at home, works at some despised chain restaurant and mopes when their younger, prospering intellect of a sibling comes over for family dinners. In this case, the depressive drop-kick is ‘No Strings Attached’ and that shinier and prized child is “Friends with Benefits”. Not only is this kid funnier, more successful and more likely to be someone’s Sunday afternoon laugh… but you can actually sit through their stories.

Directed by Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters (1984), Twins (1988)), the romantic comedy that held potential to completely tarnish the genre follows Emma (Natalie Portman) and Adam (Ashton Kutcher), two twenty-somethings with a small history who just can’t seem to stop running into each other. He’s a show runner on a “Glee” carbon copy, she’s a practicing med student – why didn’t they realise they were destined for each other sooner!? After finding out that his ex-girlfriend is now the love monkey of his clinging-to-his-youth father, he oh so originally gets absolutely smashed and ends up in Emma’s apartment, naked, trying to gage if he slept with any of them. Somehow, this leads to them actually having sex and announcing their thoughts on a friends with benefits-style situation. As everyone who has engaged in the act of watching film or reading novels in the last century would know, one of them falls in love, the other breaks it off but then realises that it is fate and a grand finale kiss is shared. With its R rating, you’d think there may be some intriguing emotional or sexual intensity… don’t be fooled… PG-13 has obviously just been playing pranks again.

Although Natalie Portman has a slight edge in this film, that is really all her truly boring character possesses. The sense of humour attempted had me thirsty. How and why she helped produce this train wreck I will never know… especially considering a few months after this release she was deservedly crowned with an Oscar for her performance in Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan”. Same can be considered of Ashton Kutcher, except his character is even worse… he is simply the male unit… but taller and still looking a little like a frat-boy. Kutcher’s choices in roles seem to be becoming more limited to the skin-deep pretty boy as portrayed in this one. It is purely cringe-worthy and laborious. His performance in The Butterfly Effect (2004) provided audiences with an indication of his potential as a serious actor, however we are once again trigger-happy on the back button twenty minutes into his films as they are essentially all the same formulaic rom-coms that he starred in last year… and the year before that… and the year before that.

What our younger sibling here learnt from the older one was that actual humour and characters who are not mops with eyes turn out to be quite important in cinema. Is it typical? Yes. Is it predictable? Yes. Does it have some kind of montage in the beginning of an element of their relationship? Of course. But it’s done well. It holds wit and enjoyment, it gives us amusing and more in-depth characters… they are by no means breathtakingly complex but they are at least more than one-dimensional. Despite the events that take place in this film being less believable and extraordinary than that of “No Strings Attached” (i.e. flash mob in central station, a scene on the Hollywood sign, etc) – audiences are used to this “high-life” in romantic comedies and it manages to not draw away from the intention of the film. “Friends With Benefits” also doesn’t overwhelm with its characters like “No Strings Attached” seems to – in the two hour film there is too much going on for these characters – substantial relationship are tried and failed because there is simply not enough time and dialogue for them to work with and establish.

In conclusion, at your next girls night or solo-hate-on-people-in-relationships sesh, “No Strings Attached” won’t be a friend that benefits you. Don’t let Ashton Kutcher’s eyes try and change anything.