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Let’s get a few things out of the way about Natalie Portman:  Men want her.  Women want to be her.  As far as A-List celebs go, she’s hip, intelligent, and from a behavioral standpoint, she pretty much approaches normal.  I’d even go as far as saying she’s deep (a vegeterian/ sometimes vegan lifestyle and an ivy league degree are not a casual endeavors).  These qualifications aside, I can plainly state the following: critics think this actress can’t act.  Some even say Portman’s acting skills are no deeper than her aquiline profile.

Her current cinematic endeavor, Brothers, which also features Jake Gyllenhaal and Toby Maguire has secured already-smitten Portman fans.  It has not, however, found fans in the world of drama connoisseurs.  

A breakthrough, I know – it’s no novelty that an actresses is richer in the beauty department than the talent one, but movie mavens are ripping her apart in her Brothers role.  She is accused of replacing genuine acting with, “seductive eyelid-batting,” and, “the occasional outburst of petulance.”  One critic reviewed, “She doesn’t overact or underact; she just stands around with whatever the appropriate expression for the scene seems to be on her sweet, pretty, childlike face. If there’s something going on behind that face, I neither know nor care what it is, which means that long stretches of Brothers involving her character’s interiority struck me as dramatically inert.”  Harsh.  Another writes that, “the most powerful accessory in Portman’s bag of tricks is still her beauty.”  Ho hum.

Now don’t go nuts feeling sorry for her.  Ms. Portman has a Harvard degree, 0% body fat, and a face that is practically impossible to cut up.  Needless to say there is likely a bevy of fans out there who would, if given a chance, give an organ to satisfy her every whim.  I imagine those critiquing her acting skills possess none of these, and that their judgements of her lackluster skills will have ZERO ill effects on her movie stardom success.  “I can’t stand Natalie Portman. I’ve never believed her in a single role. She evokes no emotional response in me beyond, ‘Oh, there’s Natalie Portman.’”  Don’t matter, Natalie Portman’s beauty’s laughing all the way to the bank.