Love and Other Drugs Review – Take a Peek Under the Surface

Recommendation numero uno – if you’re like me and still relatively uncomfortable viewing nudity and graphic sex with your parents, don’t see this film with your mother. Yup, I did that.

Love and Other Drugs was different than I expected, which is typically a ringing endorsement. I like it when films surprise me, present more layers and complexity than is visible in a minute and half long trailer.  I expected a romantic comedy with a male lead who has commitment issues, family issues, self esteem issues (pick your poison) who falls hard for the independent writer, actress, singer, painter (pick your poison) who rejects him but in the end makes him see love for what it truly is. This film does have those basic building blocks, but the character of Maggie (Anne Hathaway) is complicated by a degenerative neurological disorder. She has early onset Parkinson’s, a disease for which is there no cure, and my generation became familiar with through the brave struggles of Michael J. Fox.

Jamie (Jake Gyllenhaal) comes from a family of doctors, with the notable exception of his nerdy brother who sold some sort of techno company for millions of bucks. Jamie refused to go to medical school in order to prove his independence to his father, and his family treats him like a lazy kid full of nothing but wasted potential. What he has, though, is a super talent for both sales and getting laid. He joins a pharmaceutical sales company and movies to Ohio to begin hocking anti-depressants, antibiotics, and finally Viagra – which lands him a chance encounter with Maggie’s breasts during a medical exam.

After the obligatory incident in which she beats him for sneaking a peek under false pretenses, she agrees to have coffee with him. After a short conversation in which she calls bullshit on all the moves that normally work for Jamie like a charm, she drags him back to her place to have sex. Turns out Miss Maggie has intimacy issues of her own, due to the fact that she doesn’t expect anyone to want to stick around when her disease starts to get the better of her. Instead of trying, she sleeps around and then moves on when the guy starts to get attached.

She and Jamie have a whirlwind…well, it’s not so much a romance since all they do is have lots and lots of pretty graphic sex. Still, they do manage to develop feelings for one another (which, I agree, tends to happen when people have lots of sex). We fall into a pattern of Maggie pushing Jamie away, Jamie making the grand gesture to get her back, until finally she agrees to limited girlfriend terms. One of the most charming scenes of the film is the night he comes home, freaking out about something. His heart is pounding, he’s sweating, he’s shaking – and finally tells her he loves her. He’s never said it before, not to anyone. Her face and her response are priceless: “Oh god, you’re more fucked up than I am.”

Things begin to go south when the symptoms of Maggie’s disease worsen, and she accompanies him on a work trip to Chicago. While Jamie hobnobs with hot chicks and dudes in smart suits, Maggie sits across the street at a convention for people like her – people with Parkinsons. The realization she’s not alone opens up new doors in her mind, and she finally admits that she loves Jamie too. He, however, was told a cautionary tale at the buffet table, and can’t get it out of his head. A man who has dealt with a wife with Parkinsons for decades advises Jamie to run – if he could go back, he’d leave. Jamie doesn’t want to leave, but all of the sudden he needs her to get better.

Jamie drags Maggie on all sorts of cutting edge treatment visits, seminars, etc. until she’s finally had enough and calls him out on what’s really going on – he can’t be with her without knowing she’ll get better. She wants to live her life, to do what she can, to be herself – that her life isn’t about her disease.

They break up. They’re both very sad. Jamie has a threesome with a Thai girl and that hot blond chick from Bones (Katheryn Winnick). We see more boobs and gratuitous sex (I suppose to show us what kind of life Jamie is passing up to be with Maggie?). In the end, he wants her, though, and makes the grandest grand gesture and the nice speech with all the right words that makes everything better.

I’m being a tad facetious here, because in all honesty the end choked me up a bit and I really rooted for them as a couple. Both Gyllenhaal and Hathaway give solid, believable performances and the story has quite a bit more heart than I expected when I sat down. I still can’t, in all good faith, say you can’t wait for video. There’s nothing that makes me say you absolutely must see this film in the theater. It is worth seeing, though, so make a note and settle in for a good show.

Not with your parents, though. Make a note of that too.