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No Strings Attached

No Strings Attached

Comedy · Romance · 2011

Emma is a busy doctor who sets up a seemingly perfect arrangement when she offers her best friend Adam a relationship with one rule: No strings attached. But when a fling becomes a thing, can sex friends stay best friends?

Movie details

No Strings Attached

“Friendship has its benefits.”

2011 Comedy · Romance 1h 47m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

6.2 / 10

252.8K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

47 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

50 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

6.3 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

Emma is a busy doctor who sets up a seemingly perfect arrangement when she offers her best friend Adam a relationship with one rule: No strings attached. But when a fling becomes a thing, can sex friends stay best friends?

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over No Strings Attached?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Where it lives

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Ivan Reitman

Written by

Elizabeth Meriwether · Michael Samonek

Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman

Emma Kurtzman

Ashton Kutcher

Ashton Kutcher

Adam Franklin

Kevin Kline

Kevin Kline

Alvin Franklin

Cary Elwes

Cary Elwes

Dr. Stephen Metzner

Greta Gerwig

Greta Gerwig

Patrice

Lake Bell

Lake Bell

Lucy

Olivia Thirlby

Olivia Thirlby

Katie Kurtzman

Court is in session

Put No Strings Attached on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Sentimental Softie

“Sincerity is not manipulation.”

The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.

The prosecution The Cool Ironist

“The strings are showing.”

Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.