First, I’m going to copy, word for word, the description on the back of the DVD:
Academy Award Nominees Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway co-star in this sexy, laugh-out-loud comedy that you’ll find positively addictive. Hathaway lights up the screen as the free spirited Maggie, who meets her match in a charming Viagra salesman named Jamie. They leap into a no-strings-attached affair and discover they share a sexual chemistry that rocks the bedroom. But no matter how hard they try to keep things “casual,” Maggie and Jamie can;t help falling under the influence of the ultimate drug… love!
What utter bollocks.
Be warned, this is not a romantic comedy. Sure it has elements that you’ll find in a rom-com along with some truly laugh-out-loud moments. But it also has elements that you’d find in a porn movie, and at some points will have you wondering why it wasn’t called Sex & Other Drugs.
What the DVD’s cover description fails to tell you is that Maggie is suffering from the onset of Parkinson’s, which ultimately leads Jamie to the ultimate romantic gesture of choosing Maggie over his dreams. It’s this element of the story-line that seems a little too serious for a rom-com, especially when wrapped inside the story of big drug companies trying to influence doctors and the sudden social shift when Viagra is discovered and marketed.
Jake and Anne (along with the always lovable Oliver Platt) put on a great show, and do the film some justice. Sadly it seems that either the Director Edward Zwick (who co-wrote it) or writer Charles Randolph – or both of them together – decided that they couldn’t make up their mind what kind of film they wanted to make.
In parts it seems to want to be the fictional little brother to Michael Moore’s Sicko, making some subtle statements on the state of America’s health system, but more so it seems to really want to follow in the shoes of Jason Reitman’s Thank You For Smoking, but rather than tackling the tobacco industry it wants to give the pharmaceutical industry the once over.
In the end it seems like Zwick and co decided to throw in the towel, add a huge component of T&A and try and cover up the mess with the vagueness of a rom-com subplot.
As a Reitman inspired, black comedy fueled social commentary, Love & Other Drugs could have been awesome, but as it is, it’s just a depressing mess of frat boy humour and Hathaway in a near constant state of undress, not that that is necessarily a totally bad thing… FILMGUIDE rating: Reviewed by: Jonathan
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