No Strings Attached is a film better suited to wiping your ass with than actually watching. If we had not paid to see it, my wife and I would have walked out long before it came to it's pointless, predicatable ending.
Emma and Adam first meet when they are 14 years old at camp, where Adam tells Emma his parents are getting divorced and then asks if he can finger her. This starts a film where absolutely everyone is rude and disrespectful to each other. At her father's funeral, Emma introduces Adam to her grieving mother as the guy she had an affair with when she was 14. When Adam pays a visit to his father, they smoke dope together and Adam learns that his dad is banging Adam's old girlfriend.
Emma and Adam do the When Harry Met Sally routine of occasionally bumping into each other until they finally jump into bed together. Harry and Sally were humans who leaned on each other when they needed a friend. Emma, a doctor, and Adam, a fim crew member, are more kin to dogs sniffing each others butts until they get horny enough to start humping.
Emma comes up with a plan to just be fuck buddies. Even though they clearly have feelings for each other she refuses to call it anything but sex. We waited for the scene where she finally gives him the reason for keeping him at a distance, but all she ever says it that she does not know. Did someone spend any amount of time writing this?
Everyone in this movie is pathetically selfish. Emma uses Adam for sex even though it is obvious that he has deeper feelings. Adam's dad does not care how his relationship with his new girlfriend will affect his son. When he ends up in the hospital, his girlfriend bails on him. When Adam passes out on Emma's couch naked, neither she nor any of her three room mates think to throw a blanket over him.
Not only did I not like any of the leads in this film, but I actively hated them. The movie almost had a moment when Adam's best friend Eli takes Emma's best friend, Patrice, on a date. She is so surprised when he opens the car door for her that she asks him to do it again. The film could have expanded their relationship of respect and etiquete, and use it as a comparison to Adam and Emma merely rutting like pigs. Eli has the best line, "Ten years from now you're gonna be having sex with your wife. And it's gonna be in the missionary position. And one if you is going to be asleep."
Portman, who is the hottest flat chested actress since Kathleen Turner, is a producer on this mess. This is clearly a chick flick as Emma is always in charge of the relationship. Every man on screen is a one dimensional prick. In the most ridiculous scene, a fellow doctor, who likes Emma, tells Adam that it is okay that he is having sex with Emma because he knows she will end up marrying him and not Adam. Yep, that is just how men work. We do not mind knowing our future wives are getting the shit banged out of them as long as they eventually get bored with it and decide to marry us.
Another scene about menstrual cycles drags on far to long. "It's like a crime scene in my pants." Patrice announces for all to hear. Women do not like having their periods and men do not like hearing about them.
The screenplay was written by Elizabeth Merriwhether. On her IMDB page she is quoted as saying, "People want to put women in one box, and I'm interested in how women can be everything at once. She can be a slut who wants to fall in love, or she can party too much, but she'll still be very smart. I want to expand the vocabulary. We'll see how long I last." Basing my opinion on No Strings Attached she should not last long. Elizabeth Merriwether is a moron. A woman who wants to fall in love should not slut around as it presents herself to men as nothing but a cum hole. If a woman is very smart she will not party too much. Merriwether's view of showing that women can be everything, actually shows them as idiots.
