The movie follows emotionally stunted med student Emma (Portman) and her friend, Glee facsimile writer Adam (Kutcher). He's sad about a break-up, and she's tired from her grueling schedule, so they decide to make things easy and just use each other for sex. Now, a movie that treats this situation like it's something novel belongs in 1994, but I suppose it could have been somewhat interesting if they didn't start falling in love on, like, day one. Which they of course do, releasing a barrage of genre tropes, from mini-golf dates, to sharing a shake at the malt shop, to Emma realizing at an inopportune moment that she really loves Adam and making a huge, embarrassingly public speech about it, to one of the hands-down cheesiest make-up lines I have ever heard in "Don't take another step closer. 'Cause if you do [chokes back tears] I'm never letting you go!" [Cue music swell.]

Most of it's way too cutesy or trying really uncomfortably to be edgy and just embarrassing itself. Case in point: When it comes time in the non-relationship for Adam to give Emma a mixtape, he comes over while she and her girlfriends are menstruating together and eating chocolate in, literally, sweatpants, and gives her a menstruation-themed "period mix," full of songs like "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Red Red Wine." This is supposed to be cute as hell, and oh so shocking, but it's just transparently trying too hard to work.

But then there are some huge laughs. Everything about Adam working at fake Glee is comedy gold. And when his ex-girlfriend starts dating his aging TV-star father (played hilariously by Kevin Kline), some seriously funny crap happens in their relationship (including, quite possibly, the greatest Lil Wayne joke ever told). I don't want to spoil the spectacular lines, but they really make you wish the movie were entirely about those two instead. Alas, it is not.

But now, on to a few of the ways in which this movie is oddly antiquated. (I mean, outside of how the two people having sex have to end up in love and monogamy at the end.) When Emma's younger sister gets engaged, Emma says to her "Are you sure you're ready to quit school and get married?" Because in No Strings Attached-land, it's apparently expected that once a young woman has landed herself a man, schooling is no longer necessary. There's also another doctor competing with Adam for Emma's affections, and he corners Adam to tell him that since he's a big strong doctor he can "provide" for Emma and "take care" of her, which is a really bizarre sentiment to feel in this day and age, but an even weirder one to feel about someone who is a fucking doctor herself. The movie's littered with strange throwbacks like that, and considering the person who wrote it is not only a woman, but a young woman, it's even more disconcerting.

The movie's also got another problem in Ashton Kutcher. That guy is gross, and no amount of female characters being fed lines about how perfect he is can mend that. I don't want to see his butt all the time, movie. Stop showing it to me. And I certainly don't want to watch these two people have sex with each other. I don't even want to picture these people having sex. I don't even want them to know what sex is until they've had the parts of their brains removed that house their memories of who each other is, so sorely mismatched and lacking in chemistry they are. All of the sex scenes in this movie are a nightmare, and when your screenplay is as screwed up as this movie's is, the least you could do is offer us poor saps some decent smut.

Did you see No Strings Attached? Tell us what you thought below, then check out our guide to Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman's dating rules!

Is he to blame? Check out an interview with No Strings director Ivan Reitman.

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