No Strings Attached

Directed by Ivan Reitman. Starring Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Kline, Cary Elwes 15A cert, gen release, 107 min

IT’S NOT often that Ashton Kutcher acts an odds-on favourite for an Oscar off the screen. Well, that’s not quite fair. The ground rules in this smackdown between the giant boy-man and Natalie Portman are unfairly skewed towards the male lead. Should Gary Kasparov agree to take on Rafael Nadal, he’d better ensure they are playing chess rather than tennis.

If you’re still following this tortuous analogy (god bless you, incidentally), then Kasparov is Portman and tennis stands in for the frivolous romantic comedy. Kutcher knows how to volley the smirks, return quips with ground strokes and . . . oh, you get the drift.

Portman may have been lured into unfamiliar territory by the script's troubling split personality. Largely a bog-standard tramp to the altar, the surprisingly sexually explicit film occasionally nods towards the funkier indie larks of (500) Days of Summer.

Natalie and Ashton play a mildly mismatched pair – he's a struggling TV writer, she's a junior doctor – who have been acquaintances since their teenage years. Following a few, vaguely romantic dalliances, they meet up as adults and, at Dr Portman's urging, agree to embark on a very modern class of relationship. Sex is allowed, but they will not become boyfriend and girlfriend. The original title, Friends with Benefits(confusingly, now the name of similar-sounding upcoming film with Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis) sums the central high concept up quite nicely.

Well, you know where this is going. Portman, rushed off her feet, finds the arrangement agreeable, but poor Kutcher, hooked on the miniature physician, becomes increasing fretful and jealous. A brood of flatmates (one of whom is, of course, a gay man) slowly edge Natalie towards firming up the shaky relationship.

The film-makers do achieve one notable coup. By positioning Portman on steps and on the upside of steep slopes, they counteract the staggering height difference between the stars. Nothing, however, can bridge the gap in their acting styles. Kutcher embraces the silliness. Portman seems lost at sea.

Some sporting analogy would help here. Erm . . .