Sex Friends

OK... i was NOT expecting much from this movie but i was really WOW at the end!!!

Yes, the movie was alright for some but I LOVED IT!!! As a Natalie Portman FAN, i was really worried about her doing a full-on Comedy role... from her past films like Leon and the Star Wars movies (Her role: Padme Amidala has a SAD ending...) Closer, V for Vendetta, Brothers... her roles from these movies were sad and sweet and her recent film Black Swan - she was super-powerful and gave an Oscar Winning role as Nina!!! I was so happy after watching No Strings Attached - Natalie Portman was super, super FUNNY - she did an amazing job!!! There are scenes where Natalie Portman is over-the-top - but i think she was great... the amount of ''BAD WORDS'' in the movie is WOW... loads of it!!!

The movie overall was good - Ashton Kutcher was alright & funny..... did an OK/ good job! The side-actors were average and the soundtracks were good...

Anyways, No Strings Attached is a must-watch movie!

My review: 7/10

I had very low expectations for No Strings Attached. The couple would make the decision to use each, one would fall for the other, and in the end they would live happily ever after. I was correct about the overall story line, but, impressively, the writers found a way the mix in enough comedy to keep you entertained for the full 110 minutes. On top of that, there is enough cutsie romance to make for the perfect date night movie. Comedy to make you laugh and romance to cheer up any romantic girl.... sounds like a romantic comedy to me!

Natalie Portman shows her range of acting abilities by having two extremely different films in theaters at the same time. I was thoroughly impressed with her ability to drop the comedic one liners and portray a unaffectionate woman who's fallen in love realistically. Comparing this to her award-winning role in Black Swan made her abilities even more impressive. I cannot say the same for Ashton Kutcher. He has a great face and is great at comedic acting. However, each serious, romantic scene he was in became unrealistic and uncomfortable.

Overall, this is the perfect date night or girls night movie. It has some great comedic moments and brings in the romance that most ladies love to see. If you are looking for a light-hearted romantic comedy, this is a great choice.

See more reviews at http://burningreview.blogspot.com/

What is most fascinating about this movie is that it's a raunchy rom-com from the female perspective. Knowing that the film was written by a woman prior to my viewing it made the nuances jump out to me. It's those nuances and that perspective that make the film enjoyable. No one scene or moment merits more then a minor chuckle but the characters themselves expand and grow as the story unfolds. It's hard to care about the leads at first because there's no set up or real establishment of character. Then, they kind of grow on you even though neither really rang true for me in any real world sense. Natalie Portman is great as many would expect but Ashton Kutcher did a fine job as well. I've seen others criticizing his performance but I think that's based on a pre-determined hatred of him rather than on his work. The supporting characters were VERY weak and useless save for the father character played by the wonderful Kevin Kline. Overall, better than I was expecting it to be.

It is interesting, to this reviewer, how the IMDb membership tends to sometimes voice concerns that the mainstream reviewers miss or overlook.

The mainstream critics (which you check for yourself, link on the title for this film) either felt that the script worked and produced an entertaining movie -- or that the script failed, and the movie lacked punch.

Almost universally, however, Ms. Portman's performance was praised. Some felt, in fact, that it carried the entire movie (Kutcher's career, like that former romantic lead Freddie Prinze, tends to veer more toward "straight man" ie, as merely the "sparkplug" for whomever he is playing against.) Here on IMDb however I find reviews that go further than the mainstream critics, and actually seemed annoyed at Ms. Portman for taking the role in the first place...? As if the role (or the movie, or the script) was beneath her? In the opinion of this reviewer, Ms. Portman 'is' the movie. The script is OK -- perhaps with some excellent moments here and there, both verbal and slapstick -- and the co-stars are also merely OK.

But it is the comic timing and willingness of Ms. Portman to throw herself 100% into such an initially weak character ... and the make that character stronger and more interesting than the scriptwriter ever imagined. This is what carries the film, and this is what holds it together and makes it work.

I will add to this review the same remark I penned recently in another review of a so-called "High Concept" Hollywood comedy -- Ghost Town 2008 --- namely that, at the end of the day, when this film goes into the great digital archive and becomes available to viewers of the future (as in, two generations from now or more), the sneers from today's viewers will fade away and be replaced by the observation that, like Tea Leoni, Ms. Portman simply did not do enough films to satisfy her fans.

I gave this movie an 8/10 simply because it will keep you laughing the majority of the time. Sure the ending is predictable and a few of the background actors deliver lackluster performances but Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher fit very nicely together as the main characters, you could really tell they had fun working together.

I see a lot of other reviews criticizing Portman for "stooping to this level" and I'm not too sure why, maybe they didn't go see it in the right frame of mind...this movie is what it is, a romantic comedy about two friends who decide to take their relationship to the next level without having any of the commitments and "duties" of being an actual couple, that's what the trailers showed it as, that's what the actors described it as, nothing was a surprise...she did a cute, funny romantic comedy, it's not like she dove head first into the adult film industry.

Will this movie be nominated for awards, probably, will it win, probably not, but overall it was cute, it was funny, and I left the theater feeling like the $10 I paid for a ticket was well worth it.