Love And Other Drugs

Anne Hathaway gets em out! Quick, lads, queue round the corner! What a cynic I am, but the amount of talk pre release of this film about The Hath’s naked scenes suggests that the producers were trying to appeal to a fairly obvious section of the market. Don’t get in a flap though ladies, as Jake Gyllenhaal also spends a large amount of the film with his shirt off. So, there’s two young good looking Hollywood stars getting their kit off and getting jiggy, but does director Edward Zwick happen to build a decent film around this? Though it’s not resounding, the answer is still “no”. Zwick has past form when it comes to directing dramas, but if you don’t include Defiance in that genre, he’s mainly been more of an action director in recent years. This shows as the film never really settles on what it wants to be, branching out in all sorts of directions before a complete mess of an ending. In the film Gyllenhaal is Jamie, a cocky and confident pharmaceutical salesman who ends up dating Maggie (Hathaway), a new-ageish waitress. However, Maggie is not all that hot on relationships, or falling in love, and coupled with the onset of Parkinson’s disease, would rather not have a man in tow. The chemistry between Gyllenhaal and Hathaway is fine, but as soon as things start to turn sour between them the film loses its way. I’ve called this a drama, as this is what it ultimately boils down to being. However, along the way we have a mix of black comedy, corporate satire, risqué sex scenes, relationship commentary, gross out gags (Josh Gad as Gyllenhaal’s brother pops up every now and then like a character from American Pie) before the finale, which comes across like a illness of the week TV movie. It’s quite a mess. On the plus side, this is a more adult approach to the boy meets girl pic (similar to the vastly superior 500 Days Of Summer) and Gyllenhaal is really starting to come into his own now as a bona fide film star. However, if it wasn’t for him and Hathaway (doing a good job despite the somewhat unconvincing character of Maggie) then this would have been a real turkey.

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict
Hathaway and Gyllenhaal are fine, but the screenplay is flawed and varies in tone too often. Rating: 5/10.