When action movies aren’t active, I blame the director
Movie Review
- ROOTING FOR ROMANCE Kutcher offers his “sex friend” Portman an appropriate bouquet in Reitman’s romantic comedy.
Seven Days
When comedies aren’t very funny, I blame the writer. The problem is, it’s hard to know exactly whom to blame. Beneath a single writing credit can lurk a roomful of script doctors – and marketers – who contributed to turning the final product into a let’s-please-everyone muddle.
Such is the case of No Strings Attached , a busy, overstuffed romantic comedy that aims enough jokes at enough demographics that some of them hit the mark. So many funny people do so many sort-of-funny things in this R-rated saga of two “friends with benefits” that genre fans may come out satisfied. For my money, it’s more of a misfire.
The single credited screenwriter is Elizabeth Meriwether, a twentysomething Yale graduate with bona fides in the New York theater: In the Times , the director of one of her plays called her “the whip-smart next-generation alternative to groundbreaking male writers like Chris Durang, Woody Allen and Judd Apatow.”
