Love and Other Drugs

The makers of Love and Other Drugs are eager to point out that its not a Rom-Com, they prefer the term emotional comedy (or emoti-com). The marketing campaign, however, has definitely been appealling to a rom-com audience. As it turns out, both are right.

For the first two thirds of the film, there is a subtle blend of satire (on the drug and health industry in America) and emotional drama and comedy. As such, it probably treads a line closer to Up in the Air than a traditional rom-com. Although its not as good as that movie, its still a very stong film. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a young, ambitious drug-rep who ends up falling for a woman with early onset Parkinson's (Anne Hathaway). Gyllenhaal and Hathaway have a very easy chemistry and there is some sharp dialogue as they cut through each others bullshit - these are two broken people, looking for escape and finding something more. It is also very funny, both in their blossoming relationship and in Gyllenhaal's attempts to market his drugs.

He is better in these sections and tends to coast a bit through the more emotional sections. Hathaway meanwhile is excellent throughout, giving a thoroughly human and believable portrayal of a woman trying to come to terms with her condition. There is also excellent support from the dependable Oliver Platt and Hank Azaria. That these first sections are handled with a lightness of touch and subtlety is all the more pleasantly surprising as director Edward Zwick (Glory, The Last Samurai, Defiance) is a man more noted for spectacle than subtlety.

It then appears that the film totally loses confidence in itself and retreats into rom-com cliche and an easy happy-ending. The second act raises big emotional questions with real weight, the last act then papers over them with platitudes and hopes you won't notice. Hathaway deserves some credit for still managing to find some real feeling amidst the cliches, but both she and the film deserve better.

Overall - 7/10 A great performance by Hathaway and what could have been a very good film are both betrayed by a formulaic artificial happy ending, but the first two thirds are well worth watching.