No Strings Attached: Freedom Is Another Word For Bed Buddies

In 1989, "When Harry Met Sally" posed the question: Can men and women be friends? Now, twenty-two years later, a new movie asks: Can men and women be friends with benefits?
Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher are the guy and gal in this thoroughly modern romantic comedy. (Mod-rom-com?) Doris Day and Clark Gable never dreamed of this kind of arrangement. Nor did Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant, for that matter.
As you know, the Movie Slut never gives the plot away, but she will say that this flick makes a valiant, and often successful, effort to distance itself from the rom-coms of the past.
How successful? That depends on whom you ask. Take the teenage guys sitting behind the MS. They could not contain their glee over the onscreen goings on. Their counterparts, the teen twitteratti girls sitting nearby, they were quieter, yet captivated.
Kevin Klein, as Kutcher's flaky father, enhances the movie with a seemingly effortless performance of making narcissism endearing. If only the movie wasn't trying so hard to pull off its premise. It's doubtful "Strings" will become the classic that "Harry and Sally" is, but in our post-Monica Lewinsky age, it does hit on some relationship truths.
Movie Slut Rating: Four out of five lipsticks.