Don Jon

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of the smartest young actors working in the movies today.  So, it's mystifying to me that he would want to make something as stupefyingly dumb as Don Jon.  And yes, I mean both the character he plays, and the movie that's named after him.  This is Gordon-Levitt's writing and directing debut, and he gives us a bunch of exaggerated cartoonish New Jersey stereotypes who act and talk like they stepped out of a Saturday Night Live sketch.  Yeah, the movie is light and mostly harmless, but it's just so relentlessly dumb at times, I almost couldn't stand it.

This is a broadly told tale of a muscle-bound meathead from Jersey named Jon whose passion for picking up "perfect 10" women at bars and nightclubs is matched only by his addiction to Internet porn.  With his bulked up body, constant dim expression on his face, and an over the top "Joisey" accent that sounds like he learned how to talk by listening to a stand up comedian imitating the Jersey accent, Gordon-Levitt shuffles through his own movie, never really creating a character I could remotely get attached to.  He's shallow, he's narcissistic, and he has all the smarts of a speed bump.  Yes, I know this is intentional, and maybe if the screenplay had some funny or clever things to say about the character's stupidity, I would find myself laughing.  But, it never builds to anything, and the character never comes across as a human being.  Make that characters, since almost everyone who walks into the movie is just as thinly developed and an exaggerated stereotype as he is.

The supporting characters include Jon's stereotyped Italian parents (played by Tony Danza and Glenne Headley), who do nothing but eat pasta in almost every scene they appear in, and drop F-Bombs in their dialogue.  There's Jon's two closest friends, who join him in picking up women at clubs, but never seem to be as successful as he is.  Finally, there's the new woman in Jon's life (Scarlett Johansson).  She likes to lose herself in the fantasy of Hollywood romantic comedies, and becomes distressed when she learns that her new boyfriend still prefers pleasuring himself to porn even after they've been together for months.  The screenplay seems to want to take a look at the reality and the fantasy of sexual relationships, and what different people build up in their minds due to the images that they see everyday.  This is a very interesting subject, and I think it could have worked in a movie, but not in one as intentionally dim-witted as this. 

Gordon-Levitt uses repetition in his directing style, showing us the same scenes over and over again, as a way to represent how an addiction can control your life.  Once again, a great idea, but one that doesn't quite work out as intended.  If Don Jon comes across as being shallow and one-note, that's because the characters within are equally so.  Everybody talks and acts like they belong in a parody.  Whenever the movie tries to make a point about something, it doesn't come across as strong as it should, thanks to the way the characters are written.  The performances, despite being delivered by very talented actors, don't help in adding dimension to these people.  It's not until the movie's third act that the things finally start to pick up a little bit.

That is because this part of the movie revolves around the one character in the film who actually comes across as a human being.  That would be Esther (Julianne Moore), a lonely woman whom Jon meets at a night school class, and slowly builds a relationship with.  She's the first to realize that Jon does not exactly prefer porn to real sex, rather that he has just never connected emotionally through sex before with another woman.  This last half is thoughtful, smart, and pretty much everything that the rest of the movie should have been.  But, it comes too late to redeem all the stupidity that came before it.  But, at least it shows us the kind of film that Gordon-Levitt was trying to make, or thought he was making.  If he hadn't have gone in such an over the top direction before, maybe he could have succeeded.

I'm sure that the actor has a great movie within him to make as a writer and director, but Don Jon is not it.  By filling his movie with such broad, cartoonish stereotypes, he kind of betrays his own ideals.  Looking at other reviews over on Rotten Tomatoes, I can see that I am in the minority, as other critics are giving it quite a lot of praise.  Maybe the problem is with me.  All I know is a good part of this movie really just irritated me.

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