Love and Other Drugs

It is a really accurate character study of two reasonably complicated individuals. But seriously, Anne Hathaway’s breasts are out so much in the first half I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up getting a nomination for best supporting actress…

Love and Other Drugs is a romantic comedy staring Jake Gyllenhaal as pharmaceutical salesman Jamie and Anne Hathaway as the artistic free spirit Maggie… or so the movie ads will tell you, but don’t be fooled.

This is not a romantic comedy in the same vein as a movie like What Happens in Vegas or Knocked Up because as well as some actual laugh out loud moments the movie is a really accurate character study of two reasonably complicated, but not uncommon, individuals.

Jamie is a womaniser, a man who loves the thrill of the chase but not the commitment of a relationship, from a family of well heeled Physicians with a dotcom entrepreneur for a brother. While Jamie has prospered as the black sheep of his family he is forced to reluctantly accept some help getting a job in the pharmaceutical sales field when he is suddenly, but not unexpectedly, fired from his job.

What the movie ads don’t tell you is that it is in a doctors office on a sales call that Jamie and Maggie meet because Maggie, at 26, has early onset Parkinson’s disease.

And this, for me, is where the movie got interesting. Not least because this is the first of many times that you get to see Anne Hathaway’s breasts.

Seriously, they are out so much in the first half of the movie that I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up getting a nomination for best supporting actress. It might be a good little bit of information for the ladies to keep up their sleeve if their man is reluctant to come and see a rom com with them.

What follows is a story about two people who are wary of relationships, for very different reasons, suddenly finding themselves inconveniently falling in love.

Jamie, stereotypically, doesn’t want to give up sleeping with an assortment of gorgeous woman, while Maggie doesn’t want to face the prospect of falling in love with someone just for them to leave when the symptoms of her condition start robbing her of the functions of a normal human being.

I’ll be honest, I’m usually a little bit cynical when it comes to the movies I review but this movie sucked me in. As the movie progresses that characters become more and more complicated and more and more believable and I think to try and describe them here would be doing a disservice to the skill that the storytellers displayed.

Below: Pharmaceutical sales get middle aged white guys pumped up. Especially when what they are selling gets middle aged white guys pumped up… Viagra.

Gyllenhaal was totally believable as his character – full of the arrogance of a young sales professional, but also delicate enough for the more sensitive sides of his character to not come across as contrived and satirical.

Hathaway also had to cover a huge range of character traits from all the way from sexual initiator to victim to muse to empowered patient and nails it most of the way. I imagine that it can’t be easy playing a patient of such a physically debilitating condition with such poise and grace as to communicate the serious nature of it without seeming like a victim who should be pitied.

The movie does ebb and flow a little bit. Towards the end it does lose pace as it moves towards its inevitable conclusion but overall it is a good movie. There is the typical romantic comedy man speech to win the lady for always and forever which is both cringe worthy (because it is so predictable) and heartwarming (because it is actually pulled off pretty well) that you actually leave the theatre having enjoyed a pretty complete story.

The movie makers haven’t taken huge risks, but they have given the story and the characters enough of a twist and given the movie enough grit that it is a welcome change from the usual rubbish that Hollywood tries to attach young actors to and call a blockbuster. I don’t know if many people will rate this movie in their personal top ten but I don’t know if I will find many people that won’t appreciate this movie either.

Love and Other Drugs – starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. Co-starring Anne Hathaway’s breasts.

By Jeremy White, 8 December 2010.