2 stars**

Both the stars for No Strings Attached go to Natalie Portman’s acting ability. It’s not that anyone else is poor, but she’s just so far ahead of the rest of the cast in this movie. Alas, it’s another of those comedies where you’ll be lucky to find a place to ‘chuckle’ let alone break into a full laugh. It’s not a drama although it may well get filed there at the rent a DVD shops.

So what’s it all about?

No Strings Attached is a 2011 American romantic comedy film starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher. The film is directed by Ivan Reitman. Emma (Portman) and Adam (Kutcher) are friends who have sex one morning and worry about their friendship being ruined. They make a pact to have “no strings attached”, to have casual sex without falling in love with each other.

Elizabeth Meriwether wrote the screenplay from her story written with Mike Samonek. At 30, Meriwether may be able to locate the exact thoughts and action of the two leads in this movie, but it doesn’t work for the comedy required in the script. It could have been so much wittier and true to the action. To be fair, there are some wonderful lines in this movie, but they’re surrounded by Blake Synder’s exact movie process, done by going A-Z and not dithering on the way. It’s so formulaic that it’s a wonder anyone required any further input after the first read-through.

The $25 million budget has been surpassed and the producers are well into profit already, let alone time for DVD and download sales.

At almost two hours long, it over stayed its time by half an hour. I didn’t go expecting much, but Ms Portman might want to be careful where she acts in future if her Black Swan reputation is to be continued. Movies like this won’t sit so well on the CV.

The best knowledge you can gain from watching this movie is that you can completely turn your brain off for almost two hours and it won’t be missed. Sit back, enjoy the locations, Natalie Portman’s acting ability, your caramel coloured drink and hot dog.

2 stars**

Ashton Kutcher is still better known as being Demi Moore’s young husband, but he’s working on it as we see more of him than her, on the big screen, these days.

Movies need their stars to surpass a certain chemistry, for their new found love to be believable. It could be that Mr Kutcher’s wife was on set during the making of this movie which would explain why there was a lack of chemistry, but Katherine Heigl starred opposite Gerard Butler in The Ugly Truth and that lacked more than just chemistry. Perhaps it’s just not meant to be and Ms Heigl needs to select better screenplays as sadly, she’s also responsible for Knocked Up. That’s a trio of movies that most would want to avoid from an actor’s acting point of view, but then the money must have been very good, which may be enough to sway the talent.

So what’s it all about?

Spencer Aimes (Kutcher) is just your average, undercover, government-hired super-assassin accustomed to a life of exotic European locales, flashy sports cars and even flashier women. But when he meets Jen Kornfeldt (Heigl), a beautiful, fun-loving computer tech recovering from a bad break-up, he finds true love…and happily trades international intrigue for domestic bliss, until Spencer and Jen are on the run for their lives.

The movie starts of as a mild laugh and then gets serious. It’s like being in two completely different movies, except that both only just do enough to keep the audience interested. The twists and turns are just plain tedious and are obviously meant to come across that way, but it only succeeds in the ticket payer thinking they’ve been had.

The silliness wouldn’t be lost in a Monty Python film, but here is just looks like a seven year old wrote the screenplay at times. Perhaps Blake Synder’s Save The Cat would be helpful here.

This movie had a good chance to be great but it missed out buy a long way. Perhaps they should get their chemistry set out again if they intend a follow up.

While reading it section by section, it didn’t appear to zip along at the pace of his previous books, but that’s because it attaches you only to those parts that apply to you. Howzat?

Save The Cat – The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need – laid out the basics to help any new (or current) screenplay writer. His second book – Goes To The Movies – gave examples of how his screenplay structure worked in big name movies. The third book is all about being a screenplay writer – in real life.

Fortunately he takes you right to the heart of the main focus of problems you may have in writing your multi-million dollar screenplay. You’ll find out about the seven warning signs you might have a good idea and the five questions to keep your story’s spine straight.

Perhaps more important to some rather than others there’s also the 5 point finale to finish any story; this is the part that many people appear to have the greatest amount of problems with. We don’t all need bland obvious Hollywood endings, guys.

The style is still very easy reading, like you’re talking to a friend, a good friend. Judging by his website’s comment before and after he died, he was that friend to a lot of people.

Sadly, Blake Snyder’s death has taken away a great guru from the screenwriting world. He’s one of the few that has been there and got the t-shirt and then let us all know what he knew.

I found the start of the book hard going, but only because I didn’t have the problems that he was explaining away. Only when I reached the parts of greater interest, did the words finally hit me like a punch as I latched on to whatever move I could make next, which instantly sent me running to my desk to make some notes.

After all, the beauty of this type of book is that it might only take one paragraph from the whole book to change your latest screenplay and by action, perhaps your whole life.

You get the picture; Blake’s influence on the world of screenplay writing has been immense. To hear of his death from cardiac arrest this week at just 51 is a bolt from the blue.

Most movie goers won’t know his name and what he did; what he brought to the industry.

His Save The Cat books have shown screen writers the world over not only many ways in which to prepare planning for the script, but also (in his second book) show how this works in tangible practice. We were due a third book from him later this year: Save the Cat! Strikes Back: More Trouble for Screenwriters to Get Into… And Out Of. I understand it is finished, but obviously his family will have a say in what happens next.

Many people have been inspired to write more due this one man’s efforts to show and teach us all how to better our skills. His books will live on for a long time and I’m sure we’ll all still be talking about his planning methods for years to come.

The best way we can honour his loss is to write, with your beat sheet by your side.

To read the review of his first Save The Cat book, click here.

2 stars **

So here’s what the directors and writers did; they sat around a large table with lots of movie industry (but not football) people. They spent hours writing down ideas on little pieces of paper. Each idea contained a scene or incident that ‘could’ happen during a movie about a boy that grows up finding out he has a great football talent. The ‘goal’ of the film is to get him to move from point A to Point Z where he’s a professional footballer, forgetting anything about character arc.

The vital move next was to add any football cliché you might conjure up to any real life cliché you could imagine of a boy moving from a poor environment to a very rich one. Finally, you need to blend in all of the standard Hollywood movie plans to ensure that Blake Snyder’s laws of screenwriting for Hollywood hits, was applied.

Any normal team would now sift through the pile of ideas and place together a plan for the movie, discarding papers that won’t fit and reducing the plot to a manageable and believable script. Unfortunately, this team decided to keep everything in, lock stock and barrel.

I laughed so much when it wasn’t supposed to be a comedy and said ‘I don’t believe it’ so many times as we guessed this movie’s plot before each scene arrived. We were correct nearly every time in planning the film’s next move.

Incredibly, two of the four writers were the genius team of Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement. I can only guess they added the good parts of the script!

Taking a boy from the poor end of Mexico, breaking into the USA and then being spotted by a former scout from Newcastle United in England, failing his trial, but getting asked back for another trial before breaking through to the first team, would have been so much better if they’d talked to some football people. Perhaps they did, but they needed to get past basic errors. For example, you can’t sign a player that late in the season. With only four games to go and the need to win them all, you couldn’t add to your English Premier league squad past January. These games would be in mid April. You can’t just become an Agent to a player. FIFA (the governing body) UEFA and the English FA have strict rules about who can become an agent. Not anyone can and you can’t do it in an afternoon.

I could go on, but to avoid cliché movie reviews, I’ll say that the camera work, moving between the actors and the professional footballers, was excellent. You couldn’t see the breaks, it was so seamless. In this area, this film beats all previous football movies.

I felt sorry for the superb Anna Friel. You would have thought she’d have learnt about being the tag along wife after her spell with Nic Leeson, so a footballer is the next best bet. She must have looked at the script wondered if the lines were really expected to be read out loud. Then a quick look at her pay check would have convinced her to actually repeat the lines.

The Paul Gascoigne/ George Best character was a perfect foil to the clean, good living Mexican. Disaster was always only a few feet away. However, we all know that in movie-street, disaster is always followed by success.

I would guess David Beckham won’t be taking up acting after his small part in this movie, but his bank balance would have improved considerably.

Unbelievably, this is still one of the best football films of all time even though it’s two hours long, despite the plot, the clichés and the inevitable ending. I mean, apart from Manchester United, who scores incredible goals in the last few seconds to win matches?

There’s some people on the pitch, they think it’s all over… but no, Goal 2 and 3 will follow.