BEFORE: I'm fond of saying that it's impossible for me to make a scheduling mistake - well, this is about as close as I get. The film that I meant to come after "The Other Woman" was "No Strings Attached", another Natalie Portman film, and when I made the schedule, I meant for that film to be the link to THIS film on the same subject. I guess I figured some cable channel would be running it by now, but that didn't happen. I could watch it on iTunes or Amazon, but the cost would be $9.99, and I doubt the film is worth that much. So I'll have to circle back next year to this topic to do a follow-up - I'm guessing most every film next year will be a follow-up of some kind.
Instead, I'll link from Natalie Portman to Mila Kunis via "The Black Swan". And I'll have to find another film to add to the upcoming around-the-world chain, but that should be fairly simple to do. Or, I could go see a current film like "The Amazing Spider-Man" or "Men in Black 3" to make my schedule work out.
THE PLOT: While trying to avoid the clichés of Hollywood romantic comedies, Dylan and Jamie soon discover however that adding the act of sex to their friendship does lead to complications.
AFTER: This one's extremely "meta" - a romance film about people who try to avoid the types of relationship clichés that one finds in typical romance films. Any bets on whether the film itself will be able to avoid those clichés, or fall right into them? Hey, I give it points for trying, but in mentioning other romance films, all they accomplished was reminding me that I was watching a (probably typical) romance film.
I can't yet comment on the similarities to "No Strings Attached", but I can comment on the resemblance to another romance film - "When Harry Met Sally". In many ways, this is an updated version of that one, they just added references to 90's songs and things like flash mobs and texting. The characters even name-check Nora Ephron at one point, so her influence is re-confirmed. The question posed by "When Harry Met Sally" was, "Can men and women be friends, or does the sex always get in the way?" I suppose you could argue that this film flips that around a bit, asking instead "Can men and women have sex, without the friendship getting in the way?"
The goal here is to pair two people still reeling from their last relationship, throw them together and watch the relationship evolve, from friendship to dating to sex - but not necessarily in that order. They attempt to game the system by trying to have a physical relationship and a friendship, without the complications of an emotional attachment. Raise your hand if you think they'll be successful. Yeah, I don't see a lot of raised hands.
What develops instead is a type of staring contest - who will be the first to develop an emotional need for the other, or barring that, who will be the first to determine that the experiment has failed, and break it off?
The worthiest addition here is the subplots concerning their family members - her mother and his father. Her mother is a free-spirit who admires her daughter's outside-the-box thinking on relationships, and his father is a divorced Alzheimer's patient who still has relationship regrets from years past. Last night's film suggested that women subconsciously seek men who remind them of their fathers, but this film takes things a step further. I picked up on the suggestion that a lot of young adults today are children of divorce, and/or raised by single parents, so for them the old rules of marriage and monogamy may not apply.
I have to claim ignorance of a few things tonight - for starters, is this how Gen Y people date? I might be too old to be familiar with how the kids are hooking up these days. Also, with the exception of 6 months in 1996, I haven't been single since 1989. So I'm recusing myself. Speaking personally on friendship, however, I probably have at least as many female friends now as I do male ones - remember the codicil from "When Harry Met Sally", that men and women CAN be friends as long as they're seeing other people. I think that if I could speak to my younger self, however, 20-year old me would marvel at how many female friends that I have, but might wonder why I'm not pursuing them.
The fallacy that this film follows, however, is assuming that being in an emotional relationship with someone precludes a friendship, and vice versa. Don't the two work best together? Isn't an emotional relationship enhanced by being friends with your partner? And if you're looking for a long-term relationship, isn't it possible for that to start with a friendship? Why limit your thinking to one OR the other, when you can shoot for both?
But I applaud the frankness this one operates under - there's a bunch of nuts-and-bolts (so to speak) sex stuff that most movies wouldn't dream of talking about, though I question whether most people want to hear about that sort of thing when they go to the movies. It's a film that seems to be preoccupied with the details of everything - of conversations, of friendships, and of sex. It's easy to write in generalities, but sometimes tough to focus on specifics.
I wonder how close the screenwriter is to the subject matter, and I also wonder which 2011 film about non-emotional sex partners was in development first.
Also starring Justin Timberlake (last heard in "Yogi Bear"), Woody Harrelson (last seen in "2012"), Jenna Elfman (last seen in "Looney Tunes: Back in Action"), Patricia Clarkson (last seen in "Lars and the Real Girl"), Richard Jenkins (last seen in "The Kingdom"), with cameos from Andy Samberg (last heard in "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs"), Emma Stone (last seen in "Marmaduke"), Jason Segel (last heard in "Despicable Me"), Rashida Jones (last seen in "Cop Out"), Shaun White, Masi Oka.
RATING: 5 out of 10 photo shoots
No comments:
Post a Comment