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NO STRINGS ATTACHED Elizabeth Meriwether's script starts with a good idea: An emotionally blocked woman, Emma (Natalie Portman), and a perpetually peppy nice guy, Adam (Ashton Kutcher), find themselves attracted to each other, but because she's afraid of commitment, they agree to be "fuck buddies," satisfying each other's carnal urges whenever the need arises. No Strings Attached could have been fascinating had it made an honest attempt at exploring whether such a union could really work — think of it as a Last Tango in Paris for the Internet generation, with cell phones instead of butter as the story's chief accessory. But instead of Brando and Bertolucci, we have Kutcher and Ivan Reitman (who stopped mattering as a director after his partnership with Bill Murray in the 1980s), and the result is the usual rom-com ditherings, with the familiar assortment of stock supporting characters and one morally sound, preordained ending that again demonstrates the motto of hedonistic Hollywood is, "Do as I film, not as I do." The picture is too bland and forgettable to hurt Portman's Black Swan Oscar chances, though I imagine her primary competition, The Kids Are All Right's Annette Bening, will still be reading the negative notices with glee. *1/2
THE TOURIST A smug and chilly Angelina Jolie stars as Elise, who's being tracked across Europe by Scotland Yard due to her association with a wanted man named Alexander Pearce. The mysterious Pierce instructs Elise (via letter) to throw the authorities off his trail by befriending a complete stranger and making them think that he's actually Alexander Pearce. Elise settles on vacationing math teacher Frank (a crushingly dull Johnny Depp), but the ruse works too well, as a criminal kingpin (Steven Berkoff) also falls for the deception and orders his goons to kill Elise and capture Frank. I haven't seen France's 2005 Anthony Zimmer, but it's hard to believe it's as clumsily constructed as this idiotic remake. The Tourist is the sort of lazy picture that relies on an absolutely unbelievable coincidence to set the whole story in motion; from there, it only grows sillier, with characters behaving in illogical ways no matter what the situation. Of course, there's also a predictable twist ending, one so goofy that you hope at the outset that the filmmakers will avoid the temptation to go down that road. Instead, they gleefully embrace that temptation, putting the final period on a multiplex trip that's only slightly less annoying than a case of Montezuma's revenge. *1/2
TRON: LEGACY If the hype is to be believed, 1982's TRON was the Gone With the Wind of its day, a Citizen Kane for the modern age, a blockbusting, award-winning blah blah blah. No. TRON was a lightly entertaining movie (and box office underachiever) whose sole claim to fame was its groundbreaking, computer-generated effects. So not surprisingly, the focus for the makers of TRON: Legacy was to create visuals that take us to the next level. But did they have to do so at the expense of virtually every other department? Certainly, the effects are sometimes astounding (although the 3-D immersion is less pronounced than in Avatar), and, for a while, the film offers no small measure of fun. As he searches for Kevin Flynn (TRON star Jeff Bridges), the father who disappeared two decades earlier, Sam Flynn (wooden Garrett Hedlund) finds himself whisked into a digital landscape fraught with danger. The setup is sound and the early action sequences are stirring, but then the film settles into a sameness that allows viewers to focus too intently on the feeble plotting, the tired dialogue and the awful use of the character of TRON himself (returning Bruce Boxleitner). By the time this overlong feature arrives at its anticlimactic denouement, most viewers will be wanting their quarters back. **
TRUE GRIT It's been well documented the the Coen Brothers' take on True Grit isn't a remake of the 1969 film that won John Wayne his only Academy Award but rather a more faithful adaptation of Charles Portis' novel. That's all well and good, but when it comes to making that Netflix rental selection, the choice will be between the two film versions. By that token, no one will lose out, as both pictures are of comparable value. Forced to choose, I'd actually go with the Duke's at-bat, although Jeff Bridges is certainly more than capable in taking on the iconic role of boozy Marshall Rooster Cogburn, hired by young Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) to track down the desperado (Josh Brolin) who murdered her pappy. Sporting a sly sense of humor different than what was brandished in the '69 model, this True Grit mines its colorful characters for off-kilter comedy, from talkative Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) to scraggly outlaw leader Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper, superbly channeling the original's Robert Duvall). Bridges is likewise amusing and might have been even funnier if we could understand his frequently slurred dialogue. As it stands, whenever he's talking, the picture needs English-language subtitles as desperately as Bergman's Persona or Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. ***
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