Is it a sex romp? A romance? A medical melodrama? A sentimental misstep? Love and Other Drugs needs help, it suffers from acute schizophrenia, having been unable to define itself, instead co-opting every genre in the Hollywood playbook.
It’s excruciatingly at times, telling the story of an up and coming pharmaceutical sales rep (Jake Gyllenhaal) – is it a social ladder jumping story? - who sleeps with every nurse and receptionists he can find. He begins a one-sided affair with a gorgeous woman in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease (Anne Hathaway) who needs the pills he can give her. It tries to be profound, emotional, funny, witty, and outrageous but winds up as an exercise in unedited self indulgence.
A unifying tone can’t be pinned down either. It careens between winking, adolescent sexuality, and morbidity that results in an off kilter and joyless experience. It seems to change its mind from scene to scene and even within a scene, a jarring ride through some weird universe where authenticity is at a premium. It wants to be sincere but it’s insincere and shallow.
Anne Hathaway’s character is described as feisty and unconventional but those are positive, spin words. But she is ill and is allowed to get away with selfish, crass behavior that somehow suggests intimacy but never gets there. She is a one-trick character, unsympathetic and dull. If obnoxious and deflective is what Hathaway was going for, the usually more sympathetic actress should get an award. This is a remove from her previous body of work; she’s taking a risk in creating an unlikable character; but that’s her job as an actress.
The first half focuses on the pioneering marketers of Viagra. Gyllenhaal’s whiz kid pharmaceutical salesman isn’t above large scale cheating to make a sale. This is not the kind of role Gyllenhaal does particularly well. He is TOO sincere, and here makes too much of his lack of the commitment gene, when in fact, he’s desperate for a relationship. The film could have scored with a tougher actor who would challenge us and Hathaway’s character more.
Here’s yet another case of a trailer misleading moviegoers. The trailer pelts us with sly sex jokes, conquests, the promise of erections, and a pretty girl who wins our hero’s heart. That’s the concept, but it’s sure not what’s delivered. It’s funny and sexy to a point but becomes submerged in bitterness and emotional gamesmanship.
It’s surprising that Zwick and Herskovitz have birthed such an unsatisfying yarn given their expertise in writing relationship stories and developing relatable characters. Love and Other Drugs is wishy washy and conventional as well as an exercise to get through. No wonder it’s taken so long to get the thing into the theatres.
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