Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal star in 'Love & Other Drugs': movie review
Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal are the main draws in 'Love & Other Drugs,' a weepie that wastes an opportunity to look at medical malfeasance.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway are shown in a scene from 'Love and Other Drugs.'
David James/20th Century Fox/AP
As 鈥淟ove & Other Drugs鈥� demonstrates, the trouble with movies that try to be all things to all people is that they end up being not altogether anything for anybody.
Set in 1996, it鈥檚 a lumpy grab bag of comedy and tragedy, of spirits high and low, with more than a modicum of sex. The almost retro photogenic allure of stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway is the real subject (and drawing power) of the movie.
On the plus side, both actors, particularly Gyllenhaal, are more unbound (no pun intended) than we鈥檝e seen them before. He plays Jamie Randall, a hot-shot Pfizer pharmaceutical rep whose rampant womanizing comes to a screeching halt when he encounters Hathaway鈥檚 Maggie Murdock, an artist who has early onset Parkinson鈥檚 disease. (They meet when he sneaks a peek at her breast during a medical exam.)
Maggie turns out to be a female version of the presmitten Jamie 鈥� she wants sex with no attachments. Inevitably, she becomes attached. We鈥檙e supposed to think she鈥檚 been holding out because, given her prognosis, she doesn鈥檛 want to fall in love. But Maggie, to Hathaway鈥檚 credit, looks like she was born nobody鈥檚 fool.
The early scenes between Jamie and Maggie are the film鈥檚 best. Freed up from gallivanting with CGI effects 脿 la 鈥�Prince of Persia,鈥� Gyllenhaal is refreshingly, disarmingly boyish. Jamie makes his living hustling Zoloft, and, triumphantly, Viagra, to mercenary physicians like Hank Azaria鈥檚 Dr. Knight, but he鈥檚 essentially an innocent. That鈥檚 why Maggie, wised-up and afflicted, gets to him, and it鈥檚 also why, once they are a couple, he goes a little crazy trying to track down a cure for Parkinson鈥檚.
If director Edward Zwick and his coscreenwriters Marshall Herskovitz and Charles Randolph, had focused on Jamie鈥檚 transformation from gadabout to crusader and jettisoned all the glib, not-so-crowd-pleasing shenanigans along the way, they might have come up with something more lasting than a glorified sitcom misted over with tears. (The source material is Jamie Reidy鈥檚 nonfiction memoir 鈥淗ard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman.鈥�) But too often the big emotional trajectories, such as Jamie鈥檚 feverish medical skullduggery, are presented as high-speed montages 鈥� as if the audience would be bored otherwise.
And do we really need Jamie鈥檚 slobbo brother (Josh Gad) as a running gag? He鈥檚 a sop to the goony, sub-Apatow crowd. We also don鈥檛 need quite so many shots of googly-eyed females (such as the medical receptionist played by Judy Greer) eyeing Jamie as if he was fresh meat. This sort of thing went out with Dean Martin and 007.
What we could do with more of is the film鈥檚 attack, albeit with kid gloves, on the collusion between doctors and Big Pharma. Zwick is known for socially conscious political epics like 鈥�Blood Diamond鈥� and 鈥�Defiance,鈥� so his alternately goofy and somber, once-over-lightly approach to medical malfeasance seems like a wasted opportunity 鈥� especially since the film鈥檚 forced levity and echoes from 鈥淟ove Story鈥� aren鈥檛 exactly an adequate trade off.
The filmmakers were clearly hellbent on not making a movie-of-the-week weepie. But at least those weepies carry the conviction of their own mass-appeal sentimentality. They may be egregious but they don鈥檛 try to be anything more than they are. 鈥淟ove & Other Drugs鈥� is a slick weepie made by smart guys who want you to know they鈥檙e better than the schlockmeisters. They鈥檝e outsmarted themselves. Grade: B- (Rated R for strong sexual content, nudity, pervasive language, and some drug material.)
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