DVD Review - Love and Other Drugs

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Jamie Randall, a pharmaceutical salesman who works for Pfizer. He works for them around the time the company popularized Viagra. Instead of being about that drug, its impact on American culture, its development or even its relevance at all, this movie is about how Gyllenhaal falls in love with Maggie Murdock, played by Anne Hathaway whose character is suffering from Parkinson's disease.

 

The disease, however, doesn't debilitate her ability to have sex. She and Gyllenhaal have a lot of sex in this movie and are naked more than either has ever been. You see everything except Gyllenhaal's penis or Hathaway's vagina, but female breasts and male derrière are on full display.

 

It's unfortunate that writer-director Edward Zwick stages each of those scenes so they're nothing but awkward or uncomfortable. Both Gyllenhaal and Hathaway are great looking while nude and both are good actors, but I wasn't convinced on their chemistry. Personally, I think they had more passion between them in Brokeback Mountain than here, and, in that movie, Gyllenhaal's character was gay.

 

The idea of Gyllenhaal's character, a smooth operator and ladies' man, being undone by Hathway's character who has more serious issues but who turns out to be the commitment-phobe or the one who doesn't fall in love first was less exciting.

 

Two Stars out of Five.

Rated R for strong sexual content, nudity, pervasive language, and some drug material.

Running Time: 1 hr. and 52 mins.