Wow, I would really have hoped to start updating this a bit more regularly since the first post…but with the Japan nuclear stuff happening (part of my job is to help respond to it) AND the added bonus of my getting a laryngitis-type something sickness and being sick for almost a week now…it just hasn’t been in the cards!
But I have seen a lot of movies lately (although sadly, not very many good ones).
I’ve decided that while this is Renée’s Rambling Reviews, I am not going to bore you by going into insane depth about the plots of films. You can read these anywhere and really…this is really just a random blog with my opinions of these things.
No more rambling…on to a review (one for now, more as I have time to write them).
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Anne Hathaway’s boobs, and Jake Gyllenhaal’s stomach and lip mole
Directed by: Edward Zwick (other films include Blood Diamond, Defiance, and Legends of the Fall)
Spoilers in this review? Who cares if there are? This movie BLOWS.
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| Yeah, you should be covering your mouth Gyllenhaal, to stop my having to hear this horrid dialogue again. |
Ok so I’m not going to go into too much detail about this film, other than to say in a few different ways how much I really, truly hated it. Yes, you would think a film starring two of young Hollywood’s best looking and (arguably) talented actors would be at the very least a decent film, right? WRONG.
The main issue with this movie is it does not know what it is. Is it a romantic comedy? Is it a biting satire on the pharmaceutical industry? Is it a melodrama about Parkinson’s disease? Is it a sex comedy? Well really…it tries to be all of these things, and ends up being none of them, all at the same damn time.
Jake plays Jamie: your typical movie “cad” who is an amazing salesman both in life, and with women. He could sell sand to a camel, or however that expression goes. We learn this through a series of incredibly annoying shots of him working at an audio/video store (this is set in the mid to late 90s).
Jamie, being a failure in a family full of doctors, decides to become a pharmaceutical rep for Pfizer, which is where the satire bit comes in. Except that it’s not biting. And it’s not really satire. It’s just plain dumb.
Through a bunch of insanely idiotic shenanigans, Jamie meets Maggie: a cutely aloof young girl with early-onset Parkinson’s disease. They fight, she turns him down. They have sex one night even though they both don’t want anything serious. They fall in love. Way to be original, screenplay.
The movie then unfolds in the confusing matter I outlined above. We learn that Maggie is really sick and will continue getting sicker as life goes on. Despite a few touching moments here, and a real valiant attempt by Hathaway to honour those with Parkinson’s, it comes across as mixed up. Naturally, Jamie is upset that his girlfriend will eventually need to be taken care of fulltime. Cue melodrama and cheesy nothingness.
I think what ultimately bothers me about this film is that there is really nothing (at all) redeeming about it. It seems more hell-bent on making both actors look bad with its horrendous dialogue, uneven and confusing narrative, and ultimately shallow approach to a very serious disease; a disease that deserves to be presented properly, not simply used as a narrative device to show how the characters “change” when they meet each other. And don’t even get me started on the horrendous plot points that involve Jamie’s pharmaceutical rival, and his insanely disgusting, unfunny brother.
Oh and I haven’t even mentioned the nudity yet! Unnecessary nudity might I add. If I had more patience and less urge to pop my eyes out with a fish hook while watching this, I could have counted how many times we see Hathaway’s boobs, Gyllenhaal’s giant bug eyes, mole and (even I’ll admit it) gorgeous abs. But, why are they fully nude in pretty much all of their sex scenes? I cannot for the life of me figure out an answer to that.
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| Haha we love being naked for no reason. Where's our Oscars? |
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love nudity as much as the next gal. Nudity in films can definitely be appropriate and serve as a key moment in a story. But in this film it is totally unwarranted! Think: any Julia Roberts film, but instead of the cute kissing and waking up in bed together…there were full-out, raunchy sex scenes where you don’t just see boobs…but an entire naked woman’s body! Again, I love naked bodies tons (tons!) but not when it’s just there to see like an “edgy” film.
Lastly, the music. Ahhh how easily a movie soundtrack can make or break a film. In this case it takes something that is already dying, and really flogs it dead. Apart from the horrid musical montages, there is the incessant “church music” as one other reviewer described it, that they insist on playing behind each and every scene with Jamie and Maggie in it. This might be fine, except that it is not emotional…it’s just plain HILARIOUS. It’s some throaty woman humming no particular tune. It would have been better suited in the sex scenes if you catch my drift (bown chicka wahn wahn). I could hear it in my dreams the night I watched the movie.
Ultimately, to end this rant…I do NOT recommend this film. Unless you have a real hankering to see either of these actors naked. Perhaps the single and ONLY redeeming point? A scene when we see some real Parkinson’s patients making light of their difficult situations. Yes, that’s right folks. It took REAL people to redeem any part of this movie.
NEW BLOG FEATURE!!!! My favourite quotes from reviewers that also hated this film (courtesy of the amazing website Rotten Tomatoes):
“At least we now know why Anne Hathaway's co-presenting this year's Oscars. She's not gonna make it to that stage any other way.”
“Strange how for a movie about a Viagra salesman, we don't see the growth of the characters.”
“Beneath the gloss is the deeply unsatisfying feeling that Zwick isn't telling us enough about Parkinson's.”
“I ended up wondering how a screenplay this messy had ever gone into production, let alone attracted two actors of this quality.”
What did you think of Love and Other Drugs? Do you seriously agree with me? Or do you think I’m a nutcase with no real sense of film quality? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear from you!
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