NO STRINGS ATTACHED: It’s Like a Crime Scene in My Pants

No Strings Attached (2011) – Directed by Ivan Reitman – Starring Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Greta Gerwig, Jake Johnson, Mindy Kaling, Kevin Kline, Chris Bridges, Olivia Thirlby, Lake Bell, Ophelia Loviband, Abby Elliot, Talia Balsam, and Cary Elwes.

NO STRINGS ATTACHED is the kind of movie that tells the wrong story. It concentrates on the relationship between Adam and Emma (Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman), but it’s the most mindless relationship in the film. Adam is completely in love with Emma and Emma is emotionally distant. She just wants to have sex and he agrees because he’s infatuated with her, so they have lots and lots of sex and things get awkward because, well, they’re having lots and lots of sex and he’s infatuated with her and she doesn’t want to feel anything but can’t help herself.

So we have to spend 1 hour and 47 minutes watching them go through all the motions and back and forth and it’s rather tedious. I get that this is kind of the point of a romcom, but does it have to be so bland and predictable and stupid?

I’m much more interested in either the bizarre relationship between Adam’s dad (Kevin Kline) and his ex-girlfriend (Ophelia Loviband) or the growing relationship between his friend Eli (Jake Johnson) and Emma’s friend Patrice (Greta Gerwig). I’m much happier watching Eli and Patrice in their brief bits of relationship growth than in watching Adam and Emma struggle through their issues. That’s the relationship I want to see develop. Is that stupid? Is that wanting something romcoms don’t deliver? Wouldn’t people rather watch that than see two people cause each other misery for 90 minutes until finally realizing what we saw in the first frame?

I don’t get it.

Part of the problem is the script, which is terrible, but part of the problem is the odd pairing of Portman and Kutcher. Portman is way too good an actress to be in something this lame and predictable and lifeless and Kutcher spends most of the movie with a wounded puppy dog look on his face. It’s supposed to convey the fact that he’s in love and knows he can’t admit it to her or he risks losing her, but it comes off like he knows he’s in over his head just being on screen with Portman and Kevin Kline. I’ll say this for Kutcher, though – he might not be able to hang with Portman or Kline but he’s committed to the movie and committed to his character and he ends up coming out okay.

Kutcher is at his best when Portman and Kline are at their worst and it’s largely because of the script. When we get to the point in the film where Adam professes his love for Emma and she rejects him and he gets hurt and says they’ll never see each other again and then they spend months apart, only to have Emma finally realize she loves him and wants him back and blah blah blah, she drives her car and cries and eats doughnut holes and wipes powdered sugar across her face. It has to be one of the worst moments of her career.

A few scenes after that, Adam’s dad is in bed, recovering from an overdose of Purple Drank and Kline has to say, “I’ve six pictures of my c*ck on my phone and two of someone else’s, and I’m still pretty high on the cough syrup, so you can take this with a grain of salt, but we don’t pick who we fall in love with. And it never happens like it should.”

Honestly, someone wrote that and Kevin Kline agreed to say it.

NO STRINGS ATTACHED isn’t the worst movie I’ve ever watched, and there is a certain crashing of worlds going on here that gives the film a car wreck vibe to it, but it’s really just a film that’s one-half short of being mediocre. When I had cable I used to refer to movies like this as “AMC Movies,” because AMC always used to show a lot of really mediocre films with really big name casts. That’s what this is. In ten or twenty or fifty years people will stumble across this movie on whatever passes for their TV dial, see the list of actors, and settle in for a watch and maybe get some small enjoyment out of it.

For me, though, it left me wanting to see the stories we didn’t see rather than the Adam/Emma plot we got stuck with. Greta Gerwig hasn’t been in anything I’ve ever seen, but I’d like to see more of her because she conveys more about her character through her facial expressions than the silly dialogue provides. (Plus, she gets the best line of the film, complaining about her monthly menstrual phase and complains, “It’s like a crime scene in my pants.”) Same goes for Abby Elliot, who has a brief role as a waitress, but still manages to have a real presence on the screen that drew me in to her character far more than Portman did with the empty Emma construct. A romcom focused on the secondary characters who have to live through the silliness of the obvious Adam/Emma relationship would be a hundred times more interesting, and if they could get Gerwig, Elliot, Johnson, Mindy Kaling, Chris Bridges, and Olivia Thirlby to star in it, all the better.

Because that’s really where NO STRINGS ATTACHED falls apart. There’s an actual, honest-to-goodness story here about how single, professional women can be caught between their careers and traditional gender expectations but the film really isn’t interested in exploring any of that. It just wants Emma to be a woman with a job who likes to have casual sex but then gets waylaid by emotions. That’s it – there’s no exploration of that idea beyond her getting drunk at a party, getting jealous over thinking Adam is hooking up with two women she decides are skanks, and then bursting into his apartment.

Alternately, this film could have presented a very real story about Adam and his love for Emma and the gender expectations of his buddies telling him to hook up with anyone and everyone to get over the girl he’s clearly not going to get over. Adam’s a good guy, but he’s a sap, and if STRINGS was actually interested in telling a story, he would have found someone else, someone who had as good a heart as him. Or it would have simply let him gain an identity that wasn’t tied to being in love. Unfortunately, STRINGS doesn’t want to tell a story – it just wants to feed our expectations and so at the end of the film, Emma cries and Adam takes her back and happily ever after is promised.

For nearly everyone.

Just like in real life …

GHOSTBUSTERS: Generally, You Don’t See That Behavior Out of a Major Appliance

Ghostbusters (1984) – Directed by Ivan Reitman – Starring Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, Jennifer Runyon, and William Atherton.

Has there ever been a better movie sleazeball than William Atherton? Atherton’s Walter Peck serves as the only human villain in GHOSTBUSTERS, an officious agent of the Environmental Protection Agency who wants to shut the Ghostbusters down because his mother didn’t love him enough. Peck plays a small but important role in GHOSTBUSTERS, transitioning us from the first spectral bad guys (the old lady in the library and Slimer, most notably) to the latter demons (Gozer, Zuul, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man). Peck also gives Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) someone to verbally combat, because as cool as Slimer may be, he’s not much for conversation. Atherton provides as good an annoying slimebag here as he will in Die Hard a few years later, establishing himself as one of the ultimate “that guys,” and earning himself a spot in the movie I’d make if someone let me make a movie.

I bring Atherton up first in this reaction to GHOSTBUSTERS because it helps to enforce how important secondary casting decisions are in a movie like GHOSTBUSTERS, a high-concept comedy about a group of fired professors who open a ghost catching business in New York City. Along with Annie Potts, Rick Moranis, and Ernie Hudson, it’s four of the film’s smaller roles that keep the story’s infrastructure strong and grounded.

First, let’s be clear about one thing – this is Bill Murray’s movie from start to finish. The movie might be called GHOSTBUSTERS, and Dan Ackroyd (as Raymond Stantz) and Harold Ramis (as Egon Spengler) might get to wear the outfits and fire the fancy energy guns, but this film puts Bill Murray in the center and lets everyone and everything revolve around him. Neither Ackroyd or Ramis are very good here (Ackroyd’s style of humor always feels more suited to the broader style of TV sitcoms than motion pictures), but they don’t need to be, and they wisely create their characters to be supportive of the story: Stantz is the earnest true believer and Spangler is the awkward brains, yet both feel like real characters because they’re alternately thrilled, confused, scared, brilliant, and clueless.

It’s a wise move to put Murray in the center, of course, because Murray is the film’s best actor, and his sense of humor best sets the tone for the film’s comedy. Venkman opens the film by rigging a science experiment so a geek gets electro-shocked and a beauty (Jennifer Runyon) doesn’t. Venkman really isn’t interested in the science; he’s just interested in scoring with a hot student. Ray interrupts him, tells him there’s been some paranormal activity and Venkman wants to pass, but when the hottie agrees to come back to his office later on (“At 8?” she suggests. “I was just going to say that,” charms Venkman), he goes with Ray and Egon to the public library, where an old lady ghost is waiting for them downstairs.

When the old lady ghost gets all spooky demon face, the three men run screaming from the building. It’s a fantastic bit, with our three heroes being revealed as honest cowards. They return to their lab at Columbia in time to get fired, so Venkman convinces them to go into business together and after spending all their money without getting a client, Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) walks into their converted firehouse. Dana had some paranormal activity in her apartment a few days earlier and has finally worked up the coverage to visit the Ghostbusters (whose cheesy ad she’d seen on TV right before her store-bought eggs started cooking themselves on her counter).

Weaver provides another perfect foil for Murray (or perhaps Murray is just that good that he can play off anyone), her serious questions matching perfectly with his cartoonish science. “What does that even do?” she asks as Venkman walks around her apartment spraying something. “It’s technical,” Venkman answers back. Just like with the student earlier, Venkman is less interested in the science as he is in making the moves on the attractive woman, but where the student bought his act, Dana is cooler towards him because she can see through his routine.

Venkman doesn’t find any demons in Dana’s refrigerator, but soon after this failed investigation, things start to pick up. The Sedgewick Hotel has a ghost problem and they bring the boys in to catch a green, gelatinous eat monster they name Slimer. Along with the giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man at the end, the Sedgewick Hotel sequence is the film’s signature moment as the team faces a ridiculous ghost that’s as funny to us as it is scary to them. After tearing up the 12th floor, they finally trap Slimer in the ball room where they nearly destroy the place in capturing him. Director Ivan Reitman does an excellent job building a great scene that both stands on its own and explains how their equipment works, and when the hotel manager refuses to pay the $5,000 bill, the guys let him know they can free the ghost, so then the manager agrees and the busting business is off and running.

Complete with a montage! Featuring newspaper and magazine covers! And Ray Parker’s theme song!

You said it, Ray, bustin’ makes me feel good, too. Although, to be fair, neither Ray nor I did any kind of ghost busting. Which makes me wonder why Ghost Hunters has never had Ray Parker on. Well okay, probably no one under the age of 35 knows who Ray Parker is, but why not Ackroyd? He’s into all this paranormal stuff. Make it happen, SyFy.

There’s a big paranormal outbreak in the city so they have to hire a fourth hand (Ernie Hudson) to help them out. Apparently, the role was originally written for Eddie Murphy (just as the Venkman role was written for John Belushi and the Louis Tully role was written for John Candy instead of Rick Moranis) and intended to be much bigger, but when Murphy wasn’t available they downsized the role … almost to the point where they shouldn’t have bothered. Still, Hudson makes good in the scenes he is in, as a working class guy who knows he’s in over his head but is happy to be picking up a steady paycheck.

Though he does want his own lawyer. At least until the Mayor calls.

After Peck uses his legal power to shut down the Ghostbusters’ containment unit, all of the trapped ghosts go free. Peck has them arrested, but then the mayor comes and gets them out in order to ask for their help, which leads to the final scene against the Stay-Puft Giant. The team’s final victory occurs when they cross the streams of their weapons and shut the doorway to the other dimension. It’s a bit of a letdown, really, since the big victory happens when they fire their guns into a doorway instead of into the Stay-Puft Giant, but marshmallow still gets blown all over the building and the team (except for Venkman, who manages to not get creamed and get the girl).

GHOSTBUSTERS is a fantastic movie, always amusing and with a fine narrative. Reitman does a bang-up job balancing the story with the laughs, and the science with the action. He deftly blends in the Gozer/Zuul subplot with Dana and Louis to keep things moving, and balances the ghost/human bad guys with Peck and the ghost of the moment. There are a million movies that take place in New York City, but Reitman does a fantastic job making you feel like this movie has to take place there because the city feels like a supporting character.

While GHOSTBUSTERS doesn’t make me laugh harder than any other comedy ever, long-time readers of the Anxiety will know that I place a lot of value on a movie’s story over it’s belly laughs; GHOSTBUSTERS is always entertaining and never sacrifices story just to be funny, which is what more comedies should aim to achieve. The end result is one of the signature performances by one of film’s best actors and one of the most enjoyable films ever made.

Now here’s a little something to get stuck in your head for the rest of they day: