6 | / 10 |
Users | 3.9 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.9 |
A guy and girl try to keep their relationship strictly physical, but it's not long before they learn that they want something more.
Starring: Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Kline, Greta Gerwig, Cary ElwesComedy | 100% |
Romance | 99% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
French: Dolby Digital 5.1
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
English, English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Digital copy (on disc)
DVD copy
BD-Live
Region free
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
We don't pick who we fall in love with.
No Strings Attached is a Romantic Comedy that tries to take the "Romantic" out of the equation. Otherwise, it's the same old assembly
line-style genre picture that's been made countless times before, playing with no spirit, no direction, and little originality. For a movie about casual
sex, there's surprisingly little of it
on-screen, but so long as everything is implied and spelled out, so what if the visuals are tired and decidedly un-titillating? For a movie that's
made on a premise of doing things backwards, it's incredibly sterile and unwilling to get its hands dirty,
refusing to break convention even if it just plays the regular old RomCom story in reverse, starting with the sex and moving on to the
awkward, fumbling dates and, who knows (the keen viewer!), maybe even arrive at the "L" word by the end. And then there's the humor, such a
subjective thing, humor
about sex even more so, but chances are No Strings Attached will strike out with a dull thud with most viewers. There's just nothing new
here, despite the backwards approach to the formula; the physical and verbal humor is taken from the standard genre playbook and the characters and
their relationships are barely distinguishable from most other movies of this sort. Some will love the comfort of it all, but the brazen repetitiveness of
it will probably tire many out on the genre for years to come.
Let's get physical! Physical! I wanna get physical!
No Strings Attached arrives on Blu-ray with a handsome, often striking, 1080p transfer. This is a wonderfully filmic image, sporting a fine layer of natural grain that accentuates every single detail throughout the film. The image is remarkably sharp and infinitely clear, appearing stable and well-detailed even way back into the farthest reaches of the frame. Colors are wonderfully vibrant, popping off the screen with regularity, favoring a warm shade for sure but still well within an acceptable limit, particularly considering that a warm push is the new norm for this sort of movie. Black levels are fantastic, yielding strong shadow detail and never appearing even the least bit gray or washed out. The print is meticulously clean -- not a single speckle, scratch, hair, or other ramdom anomaly is visible -- and the transfer is free of any distracting blocking, banding, noise reduction, or edge enhancement. A few scenes do go slightly soft, but this is otherwise a nearly perfect transfer in every regard.
No Strings Attached features a plain Jane DTS-HD MA 5.1 lossless soundtrack, but while the sound design is nothing to write home about, Paramount's Blu-ray audio presentation handles the limited material with great proficiency. This is a dialogue-heavy picture, and the speech delivery is handled by the center speaker with nary a glitch. Music delivery is effortlessly smooth and energetic, whether instrumental score or various Pop and Rock tunes; Color Me Badd never sounded so good. The track also features a positive, heavy low end that's not going to rattle the foundation but that sends a strong rumble through the listening area, usually in conjunction with popular music, with regularity. The surrounds don't get much work; atmospherics, and light atmospherics at that, are generally carried by the front. There's not much going on here, but this lossless presentation handles everything asked of it with absolute clarity; one can't ask for much more than that.
No Strings Attached features a standrad array of extras, including an audio commentary and a few featurettes.
No Strings Attached isn't really a bad movie. It's formula, yes, and it's tiresome, yes, but it is not without some technical merit, a bit of wit, and a couple of decent-to-good performances. That said, it's so redundant -- even considering its backwards approach to love -- that it can't escape the innate limitations of the Romantic Comedy, the picture failing to find any social or emotional resonance and instead just playing out as a string of D.O.A. jokes and awkward situations that audiences have seen time and again in countless other movies, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but always with the same general feel. That said, some viewers may like it for just that reason; No Strings Attached is comfortable, predictable, and mindless. Movies need not always take a stab at solving problems or unearthing some deeper meaning in the plot; it would just be nice if one of these Romantic Comedies would one day look for a silver lining rather than simply frolicking around and trying to blend in with the crowd. Paramount's Blu-ray release of No Strings Attached features a sensational 1080p transfer, a genre-average lossless soundtrack, and a handful of extras. Recommended as a rental, but fans can buy knowing they're getting a quality product for their money.
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Chucked Up Edition
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Lucía y el sexo | Unrated Director's Cut
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