The Tuesday Night is Film Night film tonight was
Love and Other Drugs
I am in a bit of a dilemma with tonight's film. The reviews I read beforehand didn't look too good. The synopsis, although interesting didn't inspire confidence. Anne Hathaway and some gratuitous nudity was a plus point though.
Let us just spin around the plot before making too much of a judgement. Love and Other Drugs is based on the non-fiction book; Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman by Jamie Reidy. It traces the story of Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) a gifted sales rep. who nurtures his talents selling electronic equipment, up until the time when he and a female colleague are caught in flagrante so to speak! Fired after this misadventure, he takes up a position with Pfizer. the pharmaceutical giant, selling drugs to hospitals and it is in this field that Jamie starts to excel.
Whilst trying to persuade a hospital doctor (Hank Azaria) the benefits of his company's drugs over a competitors, he chances upon Maggie Murdoch (Anne Hathaway) who is in clinic to top up on her medication. After this brief meeting they end up back at Maggie's apartment for the first of the sex scenes. And I thought Anne Hathaway was a nice girl!
Maggie is suffering with Stage One Parkinson's and is dependent on her medication. Her relationship with Jamie is purely sexual, this is all she wants, she cannot handle commitment. And so they continue with this frequent and passionate relationship, whilst Jamie gets more successful selling drugs.
So far, so what? The basic plot is weak and the movie did not start too well, 30 minutes in and you're thinking; "is this it?" It does get better, but only just. We have some developing side plots that traverse into the main story, purely for comedy. Jamie's brother; Josh (Josh Gad) makes an appearance early on. Josh is a rich, but gormless geek and seems to have entered into the fray purely to lighten the story. In honesty though, the character was extremely annoying and was initially superfluous to the plot. Although his involvement in later scenes was more worthwhile.
There are several other mini plots and sub stories that traversed the main thread and these added some weight to the somewhat meagre main narrative.
If we depart from the story from a moment, the real deal with Love and Other Drugs is the fact that it cannot decide whether it is a comedy, a romance, a farce, a drama, or a feelgood movie and as it cannot decide, it tries to be all of the above and more. Over compensating for the lack of real story, with farcical, weak willed and sometimes dire overtones. It really should have simplified halfway through rather than diversify. It easily could have created a simplified main plot and capitalised on that, instead of trying to be all things to everyone, which it failed at.
However after halfway, things started to improve. The plot moved on to the introduction of Viagra as a Pfizer product line, so the comedy value and interest on that twist, improved the film. We also see Maggie and Jamie's relationship take a turn when she attends a Parkinson's convention. The scene with the Parkinson's sufferers is really rather good and was very funny, but also with a serious undercurrent.
This was a more memorable part of the film, as the weak comedy took a back seat and the love and romance side of this film then took the lead. This section of the film starts to redeem the weak first part, which is a good thing. The film also starts to obey the laws of romantic-comedies, in that the couple need to split up, before the inevitable pink and fluffy finale. Yes, it all comes good in the end!
In summation; very weak start which picks up after halfway. Allied with a weak but funny story makes this an adequate film, but not one to be overly grandiose about. The plus points must be; Anne Hathaway, she does have the most amazing pair of eyes! She does. Along with other assets and of course she is a really fantastic actress and she plays the part of Maggie so well. Jake Gyllenhaal is also very good and fits the role of smarmy drug rep. so well.
One other note and I have picked up on this before; another good soundtrack. Not sure what it is about American rom-com's but they do have a penchant for British popular music, which again can only be a good thing.
We round off this week's review with the all important TNiFN scores. Love and Other Drugs started with a 5, scraped to a 6 after halfway, but managed to win the audience over, in the last 45 minutes to end with a passable 7 out of 10.
As an aside, it is going to be interesting to see how the words; Viagra, nudity, sex and Anne Hathaway are going to do to the number of hits this website gets!
Until next time.
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