Fridae

Love and Other Drugs is one of those movies that occupies a strange limbo between tropes and stories, which in trying to subvert them ends up less than satisfying despite its very efforts.

Set in the mid-to-late 90s, at a period when the babyfaced Jake Gyllenhaal was just about to emerge into stardom with his role in the inspirational drama October Sky (and eerily looks like he hasn’t aged much since), Gyllenhaal plays Jamie Randall, a smooth-tongued Lothario who charms the ladies but can’t seem to keep his job as his overactive libido results in unwanted off-duty shenanigans. As the black sheep of his family he seeks to break out of his mould, particularly in relation to his dotcom millionaire brother Josh: a fat, greasy, socially awkward nerd played by Seth Rogen/Jonah Hill clone Josh Gad. Gyllenhaal finds himself shilling for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, in a dead-end job somewhere in the Ohio River Valley (most of the film was shot in Pittsburgh), so close and yet so far to the beacon of civilization that is Chicago. His boss is the rotund and smartmouthed Bruce, played by Oliver Platt who was also a rotund smartmouthed boss earlier this year in Letters to Juliet. He has to outsell his rival, the tough ex-marine Trey (Gabriel Macht). It is here that Jamie meets wide-eyed, free spirited, cynical gamine Maggie (Anne Hathaway), who sees right through Gyllenhaal’s agenda and agrees to have a sex-filled but non-romantic relationship with Jake. But we all know how this “no strings attached” policy is going to turn out...The catch is that Maggie is burdened with the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, and for all intents and purposes, it means that theirs is a love not quite doomed, but curiously shortcircuited enough. Jamie’s career soon takes off when he finds that his good looks make him a great pitchman for Pfizer’s latest drug...Viagra.

Edward Zwick is one of those filmmakers who you remember the prestige of his works better than the works themselves, given his usual oeuvre of epic, intelligent historical drama like The Last Samurai, Glory and Defiance, frequently alas overshadowed by his colleagues like Spielberg and Lucas. He tries his hand at comedy here, something he has not done in a long while, and it looks like he may not be better known as a comedy director either.

It doesn’t help if as the above paragraph shows, that this is a somewhat convoluted script that simply revels in its offbeat quality rather than having any of the disparate threads either add onto or complement each other. The thread involving Josh seems to be designed for the adolescent teen comedy crowd, being composed of the same kind of low-brow laughs involving net porn, jacking off and orgy parties, Maggie is supposed to be one of those tragic romantic drama characters who looks oh-so beautiful and free-spirited as her health and vitality fade away like Anita Yuen in C’est La Vie Ma Cherie, except the disease being Parkinson’s rather than the usual terminal cancer or whatever is supposed to produce a different dramatic effect, and Jamie is supposed to be that carefree Lothario such characters generally redeem. The films shifts abrupt gears between its various plot-threads, and even wants to be a social satire of sorts with its mockery of the pharmaceutical industry and even a retro remembrance of the mid-to-late 90s, with Spin Doctors’ “Two Princes” and Los Del Rio’s “Macarena” featuring prominently on the soundtrack, that is until Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth”, recorded nearly a decade before, shows up.

In trying to do so much, there are some targets that Love and Other Drugs easily hits often at the expense of other, worthier targets. Despite being the most annoying character in the film and not much more than a basic nerd buffoon, Josh gets the easiest laughs with his classic low-brow pratfalls and awkward situations. Gyllenhaal and Hathaway do what they can, but nothing in the script, not even the handful of eye candy provided by the sex scenes, is really able to make their story as moving as it should be. The satirical threads are discarded and so is the potential for a full on screwball comedy despite their strong introductions.

At the end of the day, Love and Other Drugs just doesn’t quite find its Rx. It’s several overlapping stories and genres, all of which add to less than the sum of their parts. And that soundtrack doesn’t help either.