Love & Other Drugs ***
Anyone who has seen the trailer for Love & Other Drugs could easily be forgiven for expecting yet another tired and predictable Hollywood romantic comedy with little to set it apart from the countless other films released this year that such a description could be so readily applied to – bad marketing department.
Whilst you probably wouldn’t know it based on the generic trailers and marketing campaign, however, this is a film that can actually be set apart from the rest of this year’s Hollywood romcoms in several ways. For starters, there’s the fact that, rather than being some piece of made up fluff, the film finds its inspirations in a very real source, that of the non-fiction book Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman by Jamie Reidy. Reidy spent nine years working in pharmaceutical sales and his book offers a self-deprecating look at the life of a drug rep, climaxing in his selling Viagra – hardly the most obvious inspiration for a romantic comedy. The second thing that really sets the film apart from the rest of the romcom crowd is that it isn’t directed by some guy who only ever seems to direct romantic comedies but rather a director often known for more hard hitting films – Edward Zwick, the director of such films as ‘The Last Samurai’, Blood Diamond and Defiance, and who hasn’t directed something on the lighter more comedic side since 1992’s Leaving Normal. Out of the trio of writers working on the film – Zwick himself, Charles Randolph and Marshall Herskovitz – there are also some fairly hard hitting credentials, Randolph having written or co-written the screenplays for films like The Life of David Gale and The Interpreter. These edgier credentials certainly go a long way to set Love & Other Drugs apart from the crowd, even if the casting of Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway – who have demonstrated themselves to be very capable actors – does scream somewhat of Hollywood casting beautiful people in the leading roles. But, do all the things that set this film apart behind the scenes also set it apart in terms of the final product or, like so many other promising romantic comedies released this year, does it prove to be one last romantic dud before the year is out?
It’s 1997 and Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a smart but unfocused med school dropout who has the knack to sell pretty much anything but whose thing for the ladies keeps landing him in trouble and wandering aimlessly from one job to the next, much to the disdain of his parents, James (George Segal) and Nancy (Jill Clayburgh), who wish he would be more like his brother Josh (Josh Gad), the rich owner of a computer software company. He continues in this way until he tries out being a pharmaceutical salesman and discovers what just might be his path to the big time. At first things don’t quite work out for Jamie, much to annoyance of work partner Bruce Winston (Oliver Platt), as he must contend with Trey Hannigan (Gabriel Macht), a suave drug rep from a rival pharmaceutical company, but soon Jamie discovers that his way with the ladies just might be what he needs to move forward as he charms Cindy (Judy Greer) in order to make his way to Dr. Stan Knight (Hank Azaria) in the hopes of signing a new client. Jamie gets far more than he counted on, though, when he meets the beautiful Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway), a fascinating and alluring free spirit who won’t let anything or anyone tie her down, not even the fact that she has Parkinson’s Disease. An affair immediately breaks out between Jamie and Maggie, the one thing that they are both adamant about being that it will be casual, just about sex. Soon, however, they are both surprised by their growing feelings for one another and what started out as just a sexual relationship grows into something far more serious. But, with Jamie’s career soaring upon his realisation that he has a gift for selling the new drug Viagra and Maggie’s condition worsening, can their relationship really be more than just a fling?
Sex – this is a central theme in Love & Other Drugs and based on this statement alone you might have a pretty good idea of what the film is going to deliver – LOTS of nudity, both male and female (Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway spend considerable amounts of screen time not wearing any clothes and they’re not the only ones in the film who get naked at some point), LOTS of sex scenes, LOT of innuendos and double entendres in the dialogue and a hell of a LOT of dick jokes. This is very much an adult romantic comedy, raunchy and racy, open and unrestrained rather than watered down to accommodate younger viewers, a movie that really does seem to be designed with grown-ups in mind. You have probably already guessed that this isn’t a movie that offers a whole lot of surprises and you would be right in this assertion as, while the film does manage to avoid many of the clichés that have plagued so many other romantic comedies of late and with that avoid becoming the typical romcom, it just can’t avoid going the obvious route with many of the gags, the humour delivering a reasonable hit rate but the laughs coming every now and then rather than non-stop. The humour is hardly sophisticated and often very crude but when it scores a hit it proves really very funny, although when it scores a miss it proves rather lame instead. While the film does often prove very funny, it is unfortunately lacking in other key areas. Not merely a romantic comedy but a film that has a much more serious side to it, the film falters when its more serious aspects find themselves heavily sidetracked in favour of the humour, even though the often very sweet and heart-warming nature means that we can just about forgive this to a point. On its own terms the serious side is handled sympathetically and effectively, the fact that the humour doesn’t cross over into these scenes perhaps a strength as it means that there are no jokes at the expense of those with Parkinson’s Disease but this doesn’t change the fact that the romcom aspect and the serious side go together awkwardly, seeming forever apart and never coming together as one. It almost feels like we are watching two different films stuck together, one a serious emotional drama and the other a lewd crude sex comedy. Independent of one another it is fairly plausible to see either working really well but together they never quite gel. Dick jokes just don’t really go with the more emotional stuff. With this we get a plot that feels rather disjointed and an overall film that, despite all its hard hitting credentials, simply isn’t hard hitting enough. While the relationship at the heart of the film does prove reasonably believable and quite sweet, it is hard to really accept the more serious emotional elements when they are mixed with so much content that is played entirely for laughs and, aside from a few scenes, little deeper insight is provided into the difficulties that people living with Parkinson’s Disease face on a day to day basis. What’s more, other opportunities to provide serious insight are also not exploited. For instance, while it appears that the film might provide us with an insider’s view on the dog eat dog world of pharmaceutical sales, the interesting insights that the film seems to be promising never manifest themselves, the only insight we get into Jamie’s job coming in a few early scenes and the majority of the film focusing entirely on his relationship with Maggie. Portraying a relationship built on sexual encounters rather than romantic dates – the relationships starts out casual, all about sex with no strings attached, before it develops into something so much more – makes for a slight change from some other recent romantic comedies, even though this isn’t the only such film this year to so go this route, and the way the relationship unfolds is logical and believable in the context of the story – for the most part at least. Despite apparent efforts to avoid falling into the traps that many romcoms fall into and even looking as though it might succeed at times, the plot eventually succumbs to predictability. Late on in the film Jamie says “Sometimes the thing you never expect to happen does” – not in this film it doesn’t, this film ends exactly as you expect. Still, despite its flaws the writing here provides us with a solid storyline and dialogue that rings true and excellent line delivery by the leads really pulls it off quite well. Jake Gyllenhaal brings on the charm with a performance that is both charismatic and convincing, it becoming very easy to buy him as a smooth operator who can both sell anything and have the ladies falling at his feet while Anne Hathaway is delightful and upbeat, sharp and quick with the comebacks, perfectly capturing the spirit of a free spirited woman who just wants to enjoy her life while she still can, the two of them sharing a strong chemistry and means we really do want things to work out for them. Additionally, when the Parkinson’s Disease symptoms begin to emerge, Hathaway does a good job at portraying them and the difficulties they pose for her character. In fact, both leads fare as well in the emotional scenes as they do in the more comedy orientated ones. Elsewhere in the cast, as a rival drugs rep, Gabriel Macht proves to be the perfect asshole while romcom regular Judy Greer puts in her usual sweet appearance as one of Jamie’s conquests. Overall, Love & Other Drugs is a very slickly made production that sadly suffers from something of an identity crisis. If it went either the all serious or all comedic route it could potentially impress us in a big way but as it is it seems stuck somewhere between the two camps, never making the two differing aspects really interact with each other in any meaningful and effective way. If you are looking for a comedy rather than a serious drama you will hold greater appreciation as it the humour that ultimately wins out but if you want greater depth this will seem like a wasted opportunity. Still, despite its flaws, this is still better than many other romantic comedies released this past year. Love & Other Drugs? More like Like & Other Drugs.
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Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)
© BRWC 2010.
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