Love and Other Drugs (2010)

Love and Other Drugs is three, three, three films in one, none of which are the ones being sold to you in trailers. But it’s hard to blame the studio for its blatant fibbing. How exactly does one sell a sex comedy/corporate satire/illness melodrama?

The basic plot points are right: Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a handsome, morally questionable pharmaceutical salesman. He spends his time in a Midwestern backwater trying to sell Zythromax, Zoloft, and the new (the film is set in 1996) wonder drug called Viagra to doctors. The only thing Jamie enjoys more than his job are the female colleagues, nurses and other women he gets to bed in doing it. So when he meets Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway) in a doctor’s office by sneaking a peak at her (absolutely perfect) breasts while pretending to be an intern, he’s got more of the same on his mind. Lucky for him, she’s also all about casual sex.

Here’s what the trailers leave out: Maggie is into no-strings-attached relationships (possible spoiler alert) because she’s been diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s disease. That’s quite a jagged little pill helmer Edward Zwick has got on his hands, and his uneven and imitative directing is proof that he knows it.

The first hour of Love and Other Drugs is funny, charming and thoroughly enjoyable. Its early scenes of frank discussions about sex, followed by frequent European-style (read: totally naked) rolls in the hay reflect a buoyant Cameron-Crowe-circa-Singles aesthetic. Once Jamie starts peddling the little blue pills, the film morphs into a Reitman-esque (Thank You for Smoking and Up in the Air) skewering of a drug industry that can help old men get erections but can’t help young women stop shaking. But the film loses most of its appeal when Zwick veers to 90s-music-scored montages of the couple’s search for a cure and a Sweet November-ish sappy (if not nearly as depressing) love story about how the sick chick changes Jamie’s life forever.

What charm endures through the entirety of the film is thanks to Gyllenhaal and Hathaway’s off-the-charts sexual chemistry and appreciable star power. You might recall that the two played a couple in a tumultuous marriage in Brokeback Mountain. Here, they are so hot together that it’s impossible to keep your eyes off them even when they’re fully clothed.

Hathaway also manages to craft a character that is simultaneously sexy (did I mention she’s naked a lot?), emotionally vulnerable, exuberant, smart, self-pitying and unlikable. It’s no small feat, since as written by Zwick and co-writers Charles Randolph and Marshall Herskovitz, Maggie is little more than a nice rack, a rebellious streak, and hand tremors. Likewise, Gyllenhaal’s Jamie is exactly the sort of appealing shithead (as Maggie calls him) that you can’t resist falling for when you finally see through his act to his good-guy depths.

Not as irresistible is Jaime’s brother, Josh (Josh Gad). This character’s chubby, schlubby nod to an audience presumably seduced by all things Apatow is out of place and completely unwelcome in this otherwise grown-up film. In a movie that was too long by at least 20 minutes, I would hazard to say that he was the fat (pun entirely intended) that needed to be trimmed.

This film works about two-thirds of the time. In those parts, it’s smart, sweet and honest. Unfortunately, it is so intent on being all things to all filmgoers that it just misses out on being great. Ultimately, Love and Other Drugs needs a drug of its own: Ritalin.