Edward Zwick, 2010.
BBFC rating: 15.
In Love and Other Drugs Jake Gyllenhaal plays Jamie, a university drop-out from a family of doctors who is hired as a trainee drug rep by Pfizer. His job largely consists of trying to persuade medics to drop Prozac in favour of Zoloft, while his principle leisure activity is seducing countless women. Sometimes the two parts of his life overlap. He gets involved in an unlikely love triangle with Maggie (a client's patient, played by Anne Hathaway) and an ex-military rep from a rival pharma firm. Meanwhile, there are rumours about a forthcoming drug for erectile dysfunction. Suiting perfectly his work-life balance, Viagra is the drug he was born to push. But might Jamie also be coming round to the idea of being a one-woman man? And, if so, is Maggie - who has a degenerative neurological condition as well as a feisty attitude - willing to be that woman?
So there's an interesting story underlying Love and Other Drugs. Unfortunately the film doesn't seem to quite be sure of what it's trying to do. On the one hand it's a romantic comedy, according to which Jamie must both grow up and overcome a series of obstacles to win Maggie's affection and fidelity. On the other, it's a sort of expose of the nepotism and corruption in the relationships between the medical and pharmaceutical industries in the United States. It's also trying to sensitively portray Maggie's dealing with and learning about Parkinson's disease. And it manages all of these with some limited success, but as a result it seems uneven. I found it difficult to settle into a mode of watching it, often not knowing quite the point of each scene until it was over (if at all). It's a shame this project wasn't handed to Jason Reitman (director of Thank You for Smoking and Up in the Air), who is a master of this sort of material, managing to court the emotive, the comedic and the profound without fully committing to any, but without selling any of them short either. That's something that Love and Other Drugs fails to achieve.
What fascinates me about this film is the possible product placement. Can't remember where I read or heard it, but a critic was saying it was unlikely Pfizer - who make all the drugs in the film you mention - would allow the use of their products unless they were shown in a positive light, which seems to be the case. Could this have gone even further and the film become a sort of extended advert?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm dying to see it for this reason.