'No Strings': Cynical view of romance

Poor Natalie Portman - she survives the horrors of "Black Swan," only to find herself in an Ashton Kutcher movie.

Oh, say the ladies, but he's so cute.

If you say so.

I'll allow "cute." So long as you allow that the phrase "rich interior life" does not suit him.

In "No Strings Attached," he applies his negligible force of personality to the role of Adam, TV production assistant who is unlucky in love. He commiserates with casual acquaintance Emma (Portman), who's too busy and ornery for love, so they decide to be friends with benefits.

Ivan Reitman's movie has been accused of hewing to formula, but it's the opposite of formula. It insists that its two leads not meet cute, that they not fall in love, that they rigorously separate sex from love and indulge freely in the former.

What's consummated is their commitment to not believing in the hooey of romance.

This makes "No Strings Attached" sound like a movie for dudes, but it's not.

Scripter Elizabeth Meriwether writes perceptively from the point of view of young women - the funniest and most convincing moments in the movie involve Portman's relationships with her female roommates (Greta Gerwig, Talia Balsam), friends since college.

A prologue detailing their shared past paints a funny/grim picture of the world we've created for young women.

The summer-camp first kiss is displaced by first clumsy sexual advance. In college, they get bombed and dance in "whore" underwear at frat parties, then after graduation get a job and hope, in the words of one, to meet a boy who does not steal her credit cards.

Chronic disappointment creates the armor of cynicism. Love, if and when it finally arrives, is likely to bounce right off of it.

That's the condition that afflicts poor Emma, who finds her disavowal of romance conflicts with her growing feelings for Adam.

Will they fall in love, admit it to each other?

This is the most conventional, least interesting part of the movie, which also expends far too much time on peripheral things like Adam's relationship with his nutty, selfish celebrity father (Kevin Kline).

It's best remembered for its portrait of disillusioned women who are suspicious of romance, but convinced of the healing power of doughnut holes.