Love and Other Drugs

Love and Other Drugs

by Charles Randolph, Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz

Hollywood writers love to create characters that are supposed to be obnoxious but ultimately lovable, who are actually obnoxious and not lovable, except in Hollywood movies. There's two in this one; actually there's anywhere between five and ten, but this brief review will only talk about the two leads. Most of the supporting characters, especially the brother, are also awful people.

Anne Hathaway comes in fairly late in the movie. She is an obnoxious patient of a doctor who Jake, completely unconvincing as a pharmaceutical salesman, is trying to persuade to prescribe his drug for depression instead of Prozac, a rival's drug. I can't remember which drug it was but if they mentioned the name Pfizer anymore I was going to scream. At one point I thought they bankrolled the movie.

Anne Hathaway is into pharmaceuticals because, we must presume, she has early onset Parkinson's so she has to take a lot of drugs. That doesn't explain what she finds so fascinating about the pharmaceutical industry but never mind, her expertise gives the writers a lot of opportunity to grandstand.

The movie is worst, like all Hollywood movies, when it tries to be "funny" or "serious" or "political" or "sexy". Hollywood writers need to stop trying to be anything because you get the feeling that someone, somewhere, is saying, "Ok it's gotten too serious we need a funny moment." Cue stupid brother. Or, "we need some kind of plot device," so let's have a fellow salesman punch Jake in the gut and then tell him the various medical things that are happening to his body.

It's best when it simply unfolds. Had they simply attempted to tell the story of a doomed woman trying to let herself be vulnerable to another human being, it might have been a fairly decent pic. As it is, several people left; some girls seemed to love it; another woman made a kind of gagging sound during Anne Hathaway's orgasm; and I gave it 2 stars of 5, mostly for Jill Clayburgh's last appearance in a movie.

2 Stars