Ouch! Did Kucher really just insult George?

Casual sex: Natalie Portman is a commitment phobic in No Strings Attached

Published: February 18, 2011

Natalie Portman has slipped out of her tutu and into the shoes of a career-oriented commitment phobic for her role as Emma, a doctor slogging out 80 hour weeks and with time for nothing more than emotionless hook-ups. Come along old-time friend Adam, played by Ashton Kutcher, throw genuine emotional and romantic investment out of the bag and replace it with a heady does of passionate, uninhibited casual sex, and for a while their friends with benefits plan is going swimmingly. That is, of course, until one of them starts to yearn for the real thing.

Director Ivan Reitman said in an interview that the movie speaks to the kinds of sexual relationships young people have today: “I’ve noticed from my own kids that with this generation in particular, young people find it easier to have a sexual relationship than an emotional one. That is how the sexes deal with each other today.”

The 1980s flick When Harry Met Sally was considered groundbreaking in its time for raising the question whether men and woman ever just be friends without sex getting in the way. Now, Reitman suggests, there’s a new dynamic at play: “Is it possible for a man and woman to have a purely sexual relationship without emotions getting in the way?”

Casual sex — be it a one off sexual encounter or, as is in the movie, an agreement to have “no strings attached” sex that stretches over a longer period of time — is sex without commitment. It is sex for the pure pleasure of sex, rather than for emotional satisfaction.

“I’ve done a lot of these kind of movies, but this one is a little bit more grow-up,” Kutcher said of his role. “It looks at whether leaving feelings out of it actually works. For a new breed of woman, career comes first, and that has changed the nature of relationships. We should have just called the movie Clooney. That’s the kind of relationship George Clooney has had for the past 20 years. He seems happy.”