Love & Other Drugs Reviews

Ookay! That was weird! I mean I liked Jake Gyllenhall and Anne Hathaway, and they were So cute together, but Am I the only one who was "Okay! Finally a scene with they clothes on!"? I mean, Tbh I didn't end it because the drama and the touching scenes that pushes you to continue the movie was Too little too late! there was charm, chemistry and wonderful couple but the director did invest it in the wrong way.
That was a film that the trailer was the best of it!

Since this movie was directed by Edward Zwick and starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, I was quite eager to check this flick. Eventually, I had some rather mixed feelings about the whole thing. Indeed, at first, they try to convince you that a movie about a pharmaceutical salesman would be or should be either really interesting or hilarious but it was actually neither. Fortunately, Jake Gyllenhaal was really charming and managed to add some interesting facets to his character, otherwise I would really have had a hard time to care about the whole thing. At some point, they brought Viagra in the plot and you would think it would stir up the story a little bit but, no, it didn’t really happen. Then, with a rather odd move, they added a girlfriend inflicted with Parkinson’s. The way they portrayed this infliction was rather well done but then, it belonged to another movie. So, on one hand, you had a comedy about a salesman, and on the other hand, a drama about a romance jeopardized by a major disease so the whole thing was rather uneven. Since my wife has been really sick for more than 18 months with almost no chance of full recovery, I guess I should have been more touched by Gyllenhaal’s predicament but I honestly had a hard time to care about the whole thing. Still, above all thanks to the decent performances by Gyllenhaal and Hattaway and in spite of its flaws, it remains after all a decent flick and it is worth a look.

Love And Other Drugs is an odd cocktail of a film, combining the upper of a surprisingly sexy romance with the impressively handled downer of Parkinson's disease, yet adding an annoying amount of cliche to the mix. That Edward Zwick's film mostly gets away with this heady combination is largely due to the performances of Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, who bring significant amounts of chemistry and energy to their central roles.

Gyllenhaal is Jamie Randall - a drugs salesman who talks a mile a minute and knows how to turn on the charm with medical secretaries in order to get what he wants. He's all about the transaction, though, breezing his way to bed with little thought of real romance. Sadly, the word breezy is not one that could be applied to the opening 30 minutes of the film, with Zwick needlessly over-emphasising Jamie's set-up. The guy's an archetypal love 'em and leave 'em so long as he gets the cash sort, so why labour the point? Of course, this being, at least in part, a romcom journey, all that is about to change and after he meets Parkinson's sufferer Maggie Murdock (Hathaway). She matches him all the way in terms of non-commitment, being interested in sex without strings until, inevitably, their heads begin to tip over their heels.

Interesting ideas lurk, tantalisingly, underneath the romcom formula and yet every brave move Zwick and his co-writers make is countered by something weak and formulaic, as if in apology. Parkinson's disease, for example, is treated with reality and respect. Real Parkinson's sufferers feature front and centre and there is a geniune sense of the debilitation of the disease, which ultimately robs people of all their physical and mental faculties. Yet, like so many Hollywood films of late, Love And Other Drugs suffers from a Hangover hangover, evidenced by the decision to include the broad and deeply unfunny Josh (Josh Gad) - Jamie's brother, who we are supposed to believe would feel quite at home masturbating to a video one of his brother's sex sessions. Equally, there are hints of ridicule regarding the pharmaceutical industry, but given that Pfizer have allowed their brand name and that of Viagra to be used, it's clear from the outset that any satire is likely to be of the vicious suck rather than biting variety.

It's a shame that the filmmakers and Fox didn't have a little more faith. Faith that we would understand and respond to the emotional undercurrents without being beaten over the head with unecessarily manipulative music cues, confidence that we could enjoy the rat-a-tat humour of the central couple's sparring without needing a 'chorus' of gross-out gags from Josh and enough trust in their central premise not to need to over-burden it with distracting subsidiary characters that unecessarily prolong the runtime. For all its failings, Love And Other Drugs still has raunch and charm enough to boost it above other romcoms, but its formula just isn't quite right.

omg! this movie is absolutely cutie and perfect! I love Jake Gyllenhaal, he's gorgeous! I want a guy like he! lovely movie, lovely couple, lovely Anne Hathaway! I loved!

The movie has its charm there, even though the story is well water with sugar. When the story begins, we do not know exactly what direction it will take. She will talk about two people who decide to have sex without commitment? Will do a critique of the pharmaceutical industry? Give hope to those suffering from Parkinson's disease? Among these and other questions, only one certainty: Anne Hathaway plays very well. Can move from comic to tragic way sooo convincing. It is the star of the new decade. As the 80 were Michelle Pfeiffer, the 90 of the 2000 Julia Roberts and Angelina Jolie, as of now it's time to shine as Anne Hathaway's diva.

Not a bad watch, a good movie for a rainy day or a boring night. Tis a love story with some humor thrown in to spice things up. Amazing how much Hathaway and Gyllenhaal show themselves in this movie. I was hoping for more juice behind the sales rep of the story, though all it was about was two people who never love, falling in love.

The movie starts out as a generic and even pedestrian romantic comedy and appears to be headed in the typical cliché driven direction but, fortunately, evolves in to something more. Jake Gyllenhaal's character and his alleged "funny" fat side kick are established almost purposefully as illustrations of what's wrong with most romantic comedies. It's Anne Hathaway's character that is the catalyst for the transformation from two dimensional rom-com to something deeper and more enjoyable. As she is fleshed out (pun intended because the more Anne Hathaway nudity the better) her character forces both Gyllenhaal's character and the film itself to grow (almost Viagra like). What follows is a deep, sometimes moving and genuinely interesting film. Commentary about battling illness, life and enjoying the moment are all relevant and poignant. Even supporting characters are given moments to shine. Oliver Pratt's drug rep has a wonderful scene delivered over dinner and there's even a smart drunken ramble explaining what is wrong with being a doctor and a commentary on the state of the Hippocratic Oath. From an emotionless and even tedious start, this film surprised me and is worth the price of a ticket.

A romantic comedy will generally take one of two approaches to the subject of sex. If the movie is one of the dozens of cutesy and generic PG-13 efforts that get released every year, it'll likely skirt the sexual topics and focus only on "clothed" romance (which is, of course, unrealistic). The other approach we see often is that of the R-rated crude sex comedy in which sex isn't really explored as a serious subject, but more like a gratuitous gag; in those films, we'll often see naked women for no reason other than to please the teenaged boys in the audience, and if we ever see a guy naked, it'll often be in humiliating circumstances that are "meant" to be funny. The reason why LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS is such a refreshing cinematic experience is that it rejects both of these alternatives. Sex is a very important aspect of the film's plot, but the film neither sanitizes the subject to make for a "cleaner" romcom nor does it treat it as something dirty and silly to get cheap laughs. The frank conversations that the two lead characters have about relationships and sex in the film are very much rooted in adult reality. Teenagers who have had sex but haven't been in serious relationships, or who are only interested in watching the film to see the leads naked, have no business attending a film as mature as LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS.

Jamie (Jake Gyllenhaal) works as a pharmaceutical sales representative, but the more important thing you should know about him is that he's a gargantuan schmoozer. He knows exactly which buttons to push when speaking to women and isn't afraid to let others know about his expertise. You'll be astounded by the logic he comes up with when he explains to his friend the reason why he keeps calling a woman by the wrong name every time he sees her. But Jamie may have finally met a woman who sees right through all his plays. One day, while Jamie is at a medical office trying to get the doctor to prescribe the samples he's selling, Jamie meets Maggie (Anne Hathaway), who is a patient. She suffers from stage 1 of Parkinson's disease, which means that she's completely normal, except that sometimes she has a hard time holding certain objects, opening containers, etc. After the requisite hesitation, Maggie agrees to go on a date with Jamie... and here is where the delightful unconventionality begins. During their date at the cafe, Maggie lays out all the things that she already knows Jamie was planning to tell her and all the motions that she knows he was going to go through to get her to have sex with him. At this point, we think "Oh well, guess he's not getting laid"... but surprise of surprises, Maggie wants the same thing Jamie wants. The term "friends with benefits" isn't mentioned, but it's exactly what they get into... that is, of course, until feelings start to develop and we discover that Jamie isn't really the smug and superficial guy we met at the beginning and that Maggie has issues that go way beyond her Parkinson's.

What I adore about the movie is that it's a genuine in-depth look at what happens in the bedroom during a relationship. And no, I don't mean the sex. Quite frankly, some people have overhyped the amount of nudity in the film, as if that were all that the film is about. There may be more nudity in the film than in other movies, but none of it is gratuitous. The intimacy that we get a wonderful look at in LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS has to do with the insecurities people face when deciding how serious they want to get with someone they're with, and more so, when you don't really have any actual control over how far you want your feelings to go and other impulses do it for you. Maggie calls Jamie by his last name, which is an indirect way of trying to keep a distance from him, and not letting their relationship become too close and informal, and she tells him "I really like sex with you. Let's keep it that way." But a few days later, when Jamie has a slip of the tongue and says, "This is nice," he quickly becomes paranoid, and asks "Am I allowed to say that?"

There are two moments in particular that could've easily descended into crass romcom territory (since they both involve the lead male's penis), but LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS handles both of them with oodles of class. When Jamie's feelings for Maggie start going deeper than mere sexual desire, he suddenly has a hard time getting an erection, but instead of having this be a generic "Come on, dude!" mock sequence, we get something much more authentic. The pair of lovebirds stop their attempts at lovemaking and simply lay down and converse for a while. Note to other people out there who are writing/directing romcoms: this is what we call character development. Later on, there's the obligatory sequence in which someone takes a Viagra pill and ends up having a difficult time getting rid of the erection. The pleasant surprise here is how un-exaggerated the gag is - in fact, I was shocked that, once he arrives at the hospital, the film simply moves on to something else. But it was the best kind of shock, of course.

Oh, I haven't talked much about the "other drugs" yet. I'll admit that there's nothing special about the film's ostensible criticism of the medical drug industry. If there's supposed to be any solid criticism, the arrows are a little bit blunt. One may also argue that there's a bit of contrivance involved in Jamie having to suddenly change his approach to things, when he has to switch from being the arrogant drug salesman to the worried boyfriend who needs to get his girlfriend cured. Still, when you have a relationship that is so great to watch unfold smack in the middle of the film you're watching, it's easy to overlook those things. If LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS had focused exclusively on Jamie and Maggie's struggle to walk the fine line between being "friends with benefits" and being in a relationship, the movie would've easily been great: a more sexual version of BEFORE SUNRISE. I would've loved that.

Earlier this year, Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher committed the reprehensible sin of banking on their attractiveness to make for an appealing pair in KILLERS, a film that deserves to be forgotten (and with such a humdrum title, I can't imagine it'll be too hard). Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway could've easily done the same here, but they avoid it at all costs, and thanks in large part to their work, I can guarantee that LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS is a movie title that I'll remember much longer. The leads here don't let their looks get in the way of allowing them to represent vulnerable, relatable characters, and one of the reasons why that is so obvious is that, in the scenes that involve nakedness, we care more about what they're saying to each other than about the fact that they're naked. Oh, and the film has a terrific ending. No, it doesn't end with an over-the-top romantic final scene in which they kiss while the camera zooms out. It ends on a more subtle note, with some voice-over lines that capture more realities about people and relationships than a lot of films ever have.

It feels kind of like a breath of fresh air to have watched LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS after the much more somber and tragic BLUE VALENTINE. Both films are incredibly accurate in their portrayal of relationships, but LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS, while not a rosy movie in the least bit, is about how to find happiness in spite of all the bad stuff that often afflicts couples. As I get ready to post my year-end blog and come up with my top 10 list for 2010, I can at least say with certainty that LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS will get an honorable mention, and for a romantic comedy that got a wide release, that's high praise. It's one of the funniest, most delightful and honest romantic comedies I've seen in a while.