A tale of two trailers - No Strings Attached

January 21, 2011

No Strings Attached opens today, and I'm quite eager to see it - especially because of the way it's been sold.

If you've only seen the green-band trailer - the one made for general audiences, you could be forgiven for thinking it looks fairly slight and  innocuous. Witness:




But then Paramount put out the Red-Band trailer - the one that can only play before R-rated movies. Take a gander at THIS, with the warning that it's NSFW:




Makes a world of difference, doesn't it? The red-band trailer actually made me laugh, while the green trailer only kinda made me chuckle.

So it distresses me a bit to see that the reviews are mixed. And in light of these trailers, I'm particularly intrigued by Roger Ebert's comments:

The movie is rated R, but it's the most watery R I've seen. It's more of a PG-13 playing dress-up.

I'm also mindful that the film's director, Ivan Reitman, has been off his game for a number of years. He's gone from great entertainment such as Ghostbusters and Dave,  to piffle such as Father's Day and My Super-Ex Girlfriend. I was kind of hoping his son's influence had rubbed off on him. Jason Reitman has directed Thank You for Smoking, Juno, and the best film of last year, Up in the Air. Given the reviews of No Strings Attached , maybe not.

Still, I will definitely see the film. For one thing, the suddenly ubiquitous Ms.Portman is always worth watching, even if her movies aren't. Most importantly, it could make for a really interesting He Said/She Said review with my colleage Hannah Poturalski.

And as Leonard Maltin puts it in his review of the film.

I do wish all these talented people had produced a more original, or memorable, film, but it is January, after all. We shouldn't expect miracles.