Love and Other Drugs

(Edward Zwick, 2010)

by Thomas Gatto / ★★½

Edward Zwick is a director that is usually associated with long historical epics. He tries to sprinkle in his love stories and identity crisis’s, but for the most part they are formula films that never really extend beyond their comfort zones. I admire Zwick for his noble effort to go outside the box and helm a romantic comedy. However, Love and Other Drugs is not a typical genre film. For one, Zwick, adapting from a novel by Jamie Reidy, is trying to splice a boat-load of genres into the proceedings. The main character Jamie (Jake Gyllenhaal) is fired from his job as a salesman for electronics and progresses onto selling samples of Zoloft. He comes from a rich family, and his socially awkward, humorous brother possesses a ton of money. Jamie is the typical family demerit, in that dropping out of medical school is harshly frowned upon by his mother and father. However, his real problem resides in the way he treats women. He is that guy that hooks up with a girl and would then prefer not to hear from them unless there is some sort of sex involved. It is not until he meets his equal in Maggie (Anne Hathaway) when we see Jamie reform and bring to light a new perspective on life. Despite some heavy hitting sentiments regarding Parkinson’s disease and how it can effect an entire relationship, Love and Other Drugs is mostly by-the-numbers, never truly surprising or engaging enough to warrant it to be more than an interesting experiment.

We follow Jamie and his life before the “big change,” and most of the filler involving the drug companies plays for laughs. He sleeps with a ton of women and is a pretty funny guy for the most part. He is a quick thinker, always searching and investigating the best way to impress a woman. Jamie applies this technique to his job selling Zoloft, annoying and bothering doctors and associates in an assortment of offices to prescribe his samples. His persistence brings about some comedic scenes, and I suspect watching this character fail scene after scene works like butter on a bagel to audiences. The real story of the film starts spinning its wheels when Maggie comes into the picture. Like all films of this nature, the two are briefly arguing with each other at first, a cheap trick to provoke the audience to think that what they are watching is indeed something unique and original. Eventually, the two have sex, and right away we are aware that the two want exactly the same thing; they yearn for someone to sleep with routinely. Not surprisingly, this tradition does not last long and it is when Jamie has some problems “getting it up” when the relationship reaches new heights and possibilities.

What director Zwick has going for him lies in his cast. What attracted me to actually see the film roots to the underrated reputation of both Gyllenhaal and Hathaway. What the two accomplish together is actually quite transcendent, considering just how ordinary the script they must recite from actually is. Gyllenhaal’s transformation of Jamie isn’t exactly spellbinding, but it is effective and enhances the love story at the center of it all. Hathaway’s Maggie takes a little bit longer to go through her respectful reform arc, but when she does, it is immensely satisfying and you believe it because of the authenticity she has given to her role. As Jamie continues to have success with selling samples of the wildly popular Viagra supplement, Maggie regresses and continually falls into the clutches of her battle with Parkinson’s. Although it contains an obvious answer, there is an effective question that comes to mind; is the success of Jamie’s career going to outweigh the feelings he has for Maggie?

Once we get through the obnoxious brother and the Viagra mishaps and what not, we are hand wrapped a pretty intriguing commentary on what it means to be a part of a relationship. This isn’t a relation that you would see featured on something like One Tree Hill or The OC, although the disease at hand may have you think so. The talents of Gyllenhaal and Hathaway lift cheesy material off the paper and give us a mature and adult-themed romance.  Jamie is always used to having all the answers, thinking quickly on his feet and usually wiggling himself out of difficult situations. Only this time, the problem he is trying to solve has no known solution. Parkinson’s begins to take over the lives of Jamie and Maggie, and this is because Jamie allows it too. He wants to be with Maggie, and vice versa, but he never truly clues in on the risk and realization of a full life with a sickly woman until he encounters a man in his Parkinson’s self-help meeting. At this meeting, while getting coffee, the man tells Jamie to get out of the relationship while he can, because love is truly not enough, and pretty soon you find yourself overwhelmed with all the different treatments and medications; your life is basically thrown away. Although this negative idea fails to bring anything new to the disease-of-the-week genre, it is played well here and I found it to be pretty effective. Maggie thinks similarly to the stranger that Jamie encounters, and it is up to the two of them to figure out if the pros outweigh the cons.

For all the moments of brilliant acting and satisfying entertainment, when we get to the end it never feels very complete or authentic. This is caused mostly by the unbelievably corny lines Gyllenhaal must force out of his mouth when he confronts Maggie back from her trip. Not only this, but there is a ton of sprinkled on rom com clichés I thought the film could have done without, and really have no meaning whatsoever to what is articulated in the final segments. The meditation on a romance with a disease in the early stages is well appreciated, but one must be able to feel a sense of completion. To blame the actors on the screen would be a severe misjudgment. The script is to blame mostly, and it could have gone through a couple of more rewrites and fine tuned editing. For all the fluff, I suspect mainstream audiences will ultimately find this film and enjoy it immensely. Admiration for Zwick’s take on a different genre is welcomed, but this best serves as a baby crawling, and we all have to crawl before we walk.