Love & Other Drugs

Edward Zwick's Love & Other Drugs is a movie constantly struggling with itself. It struggles to find the right tone, the direction it wants to go, the message it wants to convey, even what sort of movie it wants to be. It careens wildly from one idea to the next. And when it hits upon a good idea and we start getting comfortable, it switches gears on us again. It's frustrating, and the movie as a whole doesn't really work. But, there is some good stuff to be found amongst the confusion of the screenplay.

The stuff that works is when the two leads, Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, get to be smart adults in a genuine sexual relationship. When they're lying in bed, or just talking to each other, the movie works, because they come across as real, interesting people. It also helps that Gyllenhaal and Hathaway have great chemistry, and make an attractive screen couple. It makes us wish that the movie could have just been about their relationship, but Zwick and his co-writers, Charles Randolph and Marshall Herskovitz, just can't leave it at that. They also want their movie to be a satire on pharmaceutical drugs, a raunchy sex farce, a Judd Apatow-style buddy comedy, a thought-provoking drama on Parkinson's Disease, and a melodramatic "love conquers all" tearjerker.

I guess I should commend the film for combining all these drastically different elements, and at least staying afloat. The movie's never boring, the lead performances are great, and there are a number of dramatic scenes that stand out. The problem is those dramatic scenes don't belong in a movie like this. Allow me to explain. As the film opens, we meet Jamie Randall (Gyllenhaal), a smooth womanizer who uses his charm with the ladies to have sex on a regular basis at his job as an electronics salesman. He gets fired for having sex with the boss' girlfriend while on the job, and quickly finds employment working as a pharmaceutical salesman. Jamie struggles for a while, trying to sell Zoloft, but then Viagra is invented, and suddenly, he's in demand, both on the job and in the bedrooms of various doctors' receptionists that he works with on the job.

This first hour or so has the feel of an adult sex comedy, maybe something Judd Apatow or the Farrelly Brothers would dream up. In fact, Jamie has a roommate who would be right at home in one of those movies - His younger brother Josh (Josh Gad), a sex-starved little dweeb who talks and acts like he models his life after past Jonah Hill performances. But then Jamie has a chance meeting with a beautiful young woman named Maggie (Hathaway). She's a free spirit, an artist, intelligent, and sympathetic. Best of all, she likes to have non-commitment sex. Jamie is obviously fine with this, but then he starts actually liking her for who she is, and actually wants to date her. There's a problem, naturally. The reason why Maggie does not want to have a real relationship is because she's in the early stages of Parkinson's Disease, and knows she will only get worse over time.

There are the tell tale signs (he hands shake a little every now and then), and when the disease starts getting worse, she pushes Jamie away. This is when Love & Other Drugs starts to overachieve. It wants to be a thoughtful drama that asks can a couple stay together despite the hardships of the disease, while still making time for rowdy, raunchy roommates and penis jokes. I wanted the movie to go back to when Jamie and Maggie were just a simple, intelligent couple having a healthy sexual relationship. When the disease takes over their storyline, Maggie goes from an interesting character, to a walking plot device. It's a credit to Hathaway that her performance is as good as ever during these moments, but the script is no longer interested in her as a person. It's too bad, because I would have preferred a movie just with them being a couple, rather than the whole melodramatic disease plot recycled out of Love Story.

And yet, even then, the movie finds some moments of truth. There's a great scene where Jamie comes across another man married to a woman dealing with an advanced stage of Parkinson's. He talks about the daily hardships they both face as a couple, and regretfully admits that although he loves his wife, he would probably leave before the disease got so bad if he had to do it over again. The movie needed more moments like this. More truth, rather than melodrama uncomfortably merged with gross out jokes. Ultimately, this is a movie that lacks focus. It's very good in parts, but the movie itself just never gets a grasp of what it is, and who it's speaking to. With a more certain approach, this could have been something.

And yet, this is not a bad movie. Just a confused one that never finds the right tone. At the very least, it made me want to see Gyllenhaal and Hathaway on screen together again. They're great here, and manage to hold our attention even when the script is sinking in its own confusion. Edward Zwick is a strong filmmaker, and certainly will be strong again. Here, he misses the mark due to his own uncertainty about the material.

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