All the ingredients for a fine contemporary comedy are here, including a pertinent theme (the difficulty of finding love amid career obligations and easy sex) and an assortment of courageous young actors (Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Greta Gerwig, Olivia Thirlby). Unfortunately the director is Ivan Reitman, who’s never made a more emotionally complex film than Meatballs (1979). Telling the story of a med student (Portman) and an aspiring TV writer (Kutcher) who try to navigate a “sex friendship” without falling in love, Reitman settles for easy laughs, and his off-color jokes about menstruation and drug use feel like greeting-card gags. The charismatic leads keep this watchable, but it’s a waste of their talents.
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