Earlier this year, Paramount Pictures released a film called No Strings Attached. It starred Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher as two attractive singletons who both have a phobia of getting tied down in a relationship. Instead they make a pact to start having regular casual sex with each other with the understanding that it definitely won’t lead to a deeper emotional attachment: to be “friends with benefits” if you will.
The film was met with universal critical acclaim. It took the Palme D’Or in Cannes and became the first film since Ben-Hur to do a ‘clean sweep’ at the Oscars winning the Best Picture, Director and Acting awards. But its impact didn’t stop there… The films record-breaking takings at the Box Office helped rally the faltering global economy, turning what analysts feared would be an L-shaped recession into a sort-of-square-root-button-on-a-scientific-calculator-shaped recession. Inspired by the film’s uplifting and positive themes, anti-government protestors came out onto the streets of Egypt to demand a more open society creating a chain of events that led to crumbling of repressive dictatorships all across the Middle East. In fact, more or less every major news story in 2011 – from the Murdoch hacking scandal to the death of Bin Laden, Wikileaks to the Royal Wedding; could be directly and exclusively linked to the impact of this one world-changing romcom.
Our message to Hollywood was clear; “YES WE KNOW IT ONLY CAME OUT SIX MONTHS AGO, BUT WHAT WE’D REALLY LIKE YOU TO DO IS MAKE THE EXACT SAME FUCKING FILM ALL OVER AGAIN WITH A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT CAST PLEASE!!!”
So they did.
might be the best review I’ve ever read.
agreed
Thanks for the comments guys! Profoundly Moving likes this.
Matt, I agree with the comments already posted. Well done.
However, while you astutely and rightly laud these paragons of contemporary culture, which have been nothing short of a panacea for the world’s ills, I feel like the personal significance of these films, how they powerfully effect viewers on an individual level, also deserves recognition, not to mention acclaim.
What is so affecting to me about these films, what makes them so poignant and relevant – and why there can never be too many iterations of this formula, in my opinion – is that Hollywood has at last hit upon something that resonates with my own quotidian experiences; and those of others, I’m sure. Put simply, there is finally something on the silver screen to which I can relate: getting off casually and amiably with birds akin to Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis.