In "Love & Other Drugs," Jake Gyllenhaal plays Jamie, a guy who really knows how to sell anything and everything including himself to various women. Jamie is the top salesman at a local electronics store when one day his boss finds out that he is sleeping with his girlfriend and then fired. With no where else to go, Jamie asks his brother Josh (Josh Gad) to help him get a job. Josh helps Jamie land the ultimate sales job at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, where he has to use his smooth talking and charm to become the number one sales rep in Ohio. All is going well until Jamie meets Maggie (Anne Hathaway), a woman unlike any woman he has ever met before. Maggie is a strong and bold woman with a zero crap policy and can see right through Jamie's little sales man act. This turns Jamie's life into a tail spin as he learns that love may in fact be his ultimate drug...
First of all, let me tell everyone reading this review that "Love & Other Drugs" is a very hard R, which totally shocked me. I wasn't expecting a sex scene about every 20 minutes but there was at least for the first hour and 20 minutes of the film. With that being said, that becomes my first issue with the film. The movie had too much sex and I know that sounds odd coming from a guy. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed seeing Anne Hathaway's beautiful and amazing naked body but after a while it almost felt like a cheap exploit. I enjoy films that use sex scenes wisely because this film definitely needed sex to work but it went over the top and almost felt like a filler at times.
On that same topic, I am growing tired of the whole "Judd Apatow" effect in film, which are sex comedies with heart. Nowadays, a lot of chick flicks have turned into a raunchy comedy for the first hour of the film and then turn into this heartfelt love story by the end. Before "Love & Other Drugs," I saw two other trailers using this same "effect" in their storyline and I have seen them many times before as well. I think what is happening now is that Hollywood is trying to manipulate males and females by selling them these raunchy chick flicks and putting a hot male and a hot female in the lead. This seems to be a way to get guys to want to see a chick flick. The problem is that in my opinion very few movies are able to achieve this without manipulating it's audience and drawing in on being unbelievable.
I know it sounds like I am beating up "Love & Other Drugs" because I am criticizing it but truth be told I did enjoy it. Its definitely far call from being a perfect film but Hathaway and Gyllenhaal are truly great in the film and make this film worth watching. The odd thing, however, is that even with the film trying way too hard to balance two genres it works for the most part but that's only because of it's leads. Hathaway has always been in my book an underrated and beautiful actress. She's definitely not your normal Hollywood Scarlet but you know what, that's what makes her so good at what she does. She seems like a real every day kind of woman and this role fit her personality well, not to mention her chemistry with Gyllenhaal was dead on. I also really liked Gyllenhaal in the film as well. He did a good job with the material at hand and played the smooth talking sales guy like a pro. As I said, the two leads are really what helped the film succeed because without them this movie would have been a huge mess.
"Love & Other Drugs" is loosely based on a book called "Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman" and it took three people to write the screenplay for the film. The script is where the film's weakness truly lies. The mixing of sex comedy and romantic drama is a hard sell with the film. Then you add in the typical movie clichés like the fat annoying funny guy (Jonah Hill, anyone), the good looking and smooth talking lead who can get any woman he pleases, and then of course, the notorious "sick girl," just to name a few of the many clichés used in the film. On top of these flaws, the film's script seems almost unbalanced throwing in over the top nudity and sex scenes, which were definitely nice to look at but extremely uncalled for. There are also several plot holes and things that don't really add up in the film.
In the end, "Love & Other Drugs" was one of the oddest films for me to sit through in recent years because I liked it and didn't like it at the same time. What I didn't like was the over the top sex scenes along with the raunchiness of the film, the overabundance of film clichés, and how unbalanced the film was, which made it hard to figure out whether it wanted to be a sex comedy or a romantic drama and that annoyed me. I know from the majority of my review, it sounds like I didn't like the film but I actually did at times. Its one of those films I had a lot to say about it afterwords. I enjoyed the film's conclusion, I enjoyed the chemistry and performances by Hathaway and Gyllenhaal, and I even somewhat enjoyed the story even though it was extremely clichéd. Overall, I would still recommend this film because it was definitely an adult geared romantic film with great performances by the two leads.
MovieManMenzel's final rating for "Love & Other Drugs" is a 6 out of 10.
First of all, let me tell everyone reading this review that "Love & Other Drugs" is a very hard R, which totally shocked me. I wasn't expecting a sex scene about every 20 minutes but there was at least for the first hour and 20 minutes of the film. With that being said, that becomes my first issue with the film. The movie had too much sex and I know that sounds odd coming from a guy. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed seeing Anne Hathaway's beautiful and amazing naked body but after a while it almost felt like a cheap exploit. I enjoy films that use sex scenes wisely because this film definitely needed sex to work but it went over the top and almost felt like a filler at times.
On that same topic, I am growing tired of the whole "Judd Apatow" effect in film, which are sex comedies with heart. Nowadays, a lot of chick flicks have turned into a raunchy comedy for the first hour of the film and then turn into this heartfelt love story by the end. Before "Love & Other Drugs," I saw two other trailers using this same "effect" in their storyline and I have seen them many times before as well. I think what is happening now is that Hollywood is trying to manipulate males and females by selling them these raunchy chick flicks and putting a hot male and a hot female in the lead. This seems to be a way to get guys to want to see a chick flick. The problem is that in my opinion very few movies are able to achieve this without manipulating it's audience and drawing in on being unbelievable.
I know it sounds like I am beating up "Love & Other Drugs" because I am criticizing it but truth be told I did enjoy it. Its definitely far call from being a perfect film but Hathaway and Gyllenhaal are truly great in the film and make this film worth watching. The odd thing, however, is that even with the film trying way too hard to balance two genres it works for the most part but that's only because of it's leads. Hathaway has always been in my book an underrated and beautiful actress. She's definitely not your normal Hollywood Scarlet but you know what, that's what makes her so good at what she does. She seems like a real every day kind of woman and this role fit her personality well, not to mention her chemistry with Gyllenhaal was dead on. I also really liked Gyllenhaal in the film as well. He did a good job with the material at hand and played the smooth talking sales guy like a pro. As I said, the two leads are really what helped the film succeed because without them this movie would have been a huge mess.
"Love & Other Drugs" is loosely based on a book called "Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman" and it took three people to write the screenplay for the film. The script is where the film's weakness truly lies. The mixing of sex comedy and romantic drama is a hard sell with the film. Then you add in the typical movie clichés like the fat annoying funny guy (Jonah Hill, anyone), the good looking and smooth talking lead who can get any woman he pleases, and then of course, the notorious "sick girl," just to name a few of the many clichés used in the film. On top of these flaws, the film's script seems almost unbalanced throwing in over the top nudity and sex scenes, which were definitely nice to look at but extremely uncalled for. There are also several plot holes and things that don't really add up in the film.
In the end, "Love & Other Drugs" was one of the oddest films for me to sit through in recent years because I liked it and didn't like it at the same time. What I didn't like was the over the top sex scenes along with the raunchiness of the film, the overabundance of film clichés, and how unbalanced the film was, which made it hard to figure out whether it wanted to be a sex comedy or a romantic drama and that annoyed me. I know from the majority of my review, it sounds like I didn't like the film but I actually did at times. Its one of those films I had a lot to say about it afterwords. I enjoyed the film's conclusion, I enjoyed the chemistry and performances by Hathaway and Gyllenhaal, and I even somewhat enjoyed the story even though it was extremely clichéd. Overall, I would still recommend this film because it was definitely an adult geared romantic film with great performances by the two leads.
MovieManMenzel's final rating for "Love & Other Drugs" is a 6 out of 10.