No Strings Attached - DVD Review

ll 1/2

Starring Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Kline, Greta Gerwig, Lake Bell, Cary Elwes, Ludacris, Jake Johnson, Mindy Kaling and Abby Elliott. Directed by Ivan Reitman.

Sex is nothing. Sex is meaningless. Sex is just something fun people engage in, no big deal.

These are the lies the characters tell themselves, and while many of them may bounce around in hedonistic fashion, eventually, if they sleep with the same person, and that person is someone they like, feelings may develop. (Oh, no! Not feelings!)

Despite the best efforts of the main two players to dehumanize intimacy, they just can't. It is a rom-com, and you know where it's going, and while I like seeing Kevin Kline get work (as Kutcher's father), and see Natalie Portman in something without special effects, I couldn't shake the going-through-the-motions of it all.

Ever notice how many rom-coms are about unhealthy relationships that end with them breaking up, one running to the other, saying they're sorry, and then ending on an upbeat note where in the back of your head, you're thinking, "Based on the previous 90 minutes, I'm not really sure that relationship's suddenly going to be healthy and ever after"?

No? Well, I have.

P.S. This movie - at 47% RotTom ranking - is the best-reviewed movie of Ashton Kutcher's career. I certainly understand why he took the Two and a Half Men job. He'll make more doing two episodes of that show than any movie he'd star in.

Killers - DVD Review

**

Starring Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl, Tom Selleck, Catherine O'Hara, Katheryn Winnick, Kevin Sussman, Casey Wilson, Rob Riggle, Martin Mull, Alex Borstein and Usher Raymond.
Directed by Robert Luketic.

Welcome to a movie with the unlikeliest assassin ever in Ashton Kutcher, and Katherine Heigl as yet another girly-girl who acts wacky when confronted with hijinks that need ensuing. If you want to see the least convincing scream of the year, see the scene when Kutcher and would-be rival-assassin crash through her living room window. A high-pitched five-second "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!"

How did Heigl become comedienne of choice in crappy romantic comedies the past two or three years? Was she funny on Grey's Anatomy? I never watched that show, but she struck me as one who could rival Rachel McAdams or Anne Hathaway if she strived for art in every other project. As such, she's currently doomed to follow the Kate Hudson path, but even Hudson was nominated for an Academy Award once (Almost Famous was ten years ago. Wow.)

So this movie has these two cute kids meet and get married and three years later, Kutcher learns he has a bounty on his head, $20 million to whomever can kill him. Then they learn a couple of their friends are actually moles, just biding their time until they can take him out. Different suburbanites wielding weapons reminded me of Hot Fuzz, a funnier movie.

I did enjoy Tom Selleck as Heigl's uptight, successful father. Selleck doesn't work enough, and I'm looking forward to seeing if his new TV show is any good. I can at least say I wasn't bored. It's a quick, fluffy 93 minutes.