Love and Other Drugs
Writer-director Edward Zwick and one of his collaborators, Marshall Herskovitz, worked on, among other well-regarded television series, My So-Called Life, a small masterpiece of all-ages empathy, as well as a potent nineties time capsule. Life didn't feel particularly trend-baiting at the time, but watching it now functions as an easy guide to the era's flannel-centric fashions and alterna-bands that didn't quite make it.
Yet Zwick and Herskovitz's Love and Other Drugs, specifically set in 1996, just a few years after My So-Called Life went off the air, has no such casual affinity for the time. Yes, some nineties alt-rock numbers play on the soundtrack, and the Macarena is invoked to amusing effect. But these are superficial signposts, not well-considered period details. It starts in '96, and in the course of following Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhal) through the ranks as a pharmaceutical rep who eventually has the good luck to push a brand-new drug called Viagra, the movie smooshes together events from all over the latter half of the decade into a timeline that never becomes clear. (It seems to take place over the course of about a year, but a couple of montages muddle any strong chronology.)
Even those nineties rock chestnuts don't feel quite right: the movie opens with "Two Princes" by the Spin Doctors, which suggests 1992 or 1993, and Jamie's love interest Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway) can be heard blasting a Liz Phair classic from 1994. It's not quite Wedding Singer-level goofiness, but it's not very precise for some guys who were clearly paying attention at the time.
Nor, for that matter, does Love and Other Drugs possess the lovely writing and characterization of the Zwick/Herskovitz television ventures. Compared to other romantic comedies, it's a vast improvement: Jamie and Maggie have a real relationship, and their progression from semi-hostile sex partners to affectionate but hesitant partners has the rhythm of human beings, not soulless participants in a rom-sitcom.
Another touch setting the movie apart from its overlit, giggly genre siblings: Both stars get pretty naked, both physically and emotionally. Maggie, we learn soon after meeting her, has early-onset Parkinson's; she meets Jamie when he's shadowing Dr. Knight (Hank Azaria) in hopes of learning more about the pharmaceutical racket. Hathaway is touching, if not exactly revelatory, as this prickly, independent, but (it must be said) somewhat movie-quirky girl, while Gyllenhaal gives one of his best, most grown-up performances as a callow kid who bounces from sales job to sales job and bed to bed, until Maggie stops him dead in his tracks.
It's a shame, then, that Zwick and Herskovitz nonetheless make use of the romantic-comedy junkyard. Most unwieldy is Jamie's brother Josh (Josh Gad), who comes from that vulgar-best-friend template that's only gotten more use since Judd Apatow upped the ante in realistically guyish chatter. The trick, of course, is that Apatow (also a TV veteran) knows how to write funny, profane dialogue, and encourage improvisation of same. I'm not sure if it's bad writing or bad improv responsible for the dead-end comic-relief scenes of Gad yelling or sweating or yammering, but Zwick should've seen that not only does this character not work (Gad does his best/worst poor man's amalgam of Jack Black and Jonah Hill, nowhere near as funny as either), Josh has little to zero use in the movie's narrative. He barely talks to Jamie about Maggie; he just shows up for scenes that stop the movie dead in its tracks, the kind of character that never would've hacked it on My So-Called Life.
The movie recovers in the sense that we get plenty of scenes with just Gyllenhaal, Hathaway, and their chemistry, but it also fizzles out rather than sending you home with the best kind of love-story lift, the kind you might get from, say, a good Cameron Crowe movie. On television, Zwick and Herskovitz can sustain their characters and audience for hours and hours; Love and Other Drugs only manages some pleasant contact highs
.
Yet Zwick and Herskovitz's Love and Other Drugs, specifically set in 1996, just a few years after My So-Called Life went off the air, has no such casual affinity for the time. Yes, some nineties alt-rock numbers play on the soundtrack, and the Macarena is invoked to amusing effect. But these are superficial signposts, not well-considered period details. It starts in '96, and in the course of following Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhal) through the ranks as a pharmaceutical rep who eventually has the good luck to push a brand-new drug called Viagra, the movie smooshes together events from all over the latter half of the decade into a timeline that never becomes clear. (It seems to take place over the course of about a year, but a couple of montages muddle any strong chronology.)
Even those nineties rock chestnuts don't feel quite right: the movie opens with "Two Princes" by the Spin Doctors, which suggests 1992 or 1993, and Jamie's love interest Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway) can be heard blasting a Liz Phair classic from 1994. It's not quite Wedding Singer-level goofiness, but it's not very precise for some guys who were clearly paying attention at the time.
Nor, for that matter, does Love and Other Drugs possess the lovely writing and characterization of the Zwick/Herskovitz television ventures. Compared to other romantic comedies, it's a vast improvement: Jamie and Maggie have a real relationship, and their progression from semi-hostile sex partners to affectionate but hesitant partners has the rhythm of human beings, not soulless participants in a rom-sitcom.
Another touch setting the movie apart from its overlit, giggly genre siblings: Both stars get pretty naked, both physically and emotionally. Maggie, we learn soon after meeting her, has early-onset Parkinson's; she meets Jamie when he's shadowing Dr. Knight (Hank Azaria) in hopes of learning more about the pharmaceutical racket. Hathaway is touching, if not exactly revelatory, as this prickly, independent, but (it must be said) somewhat movie-quirky girl, while Gyllenhaal gives one of his best, most grown-up performances as a callow kid who bounces from sales job to sales job and bed to bed, until Maggie stops him dead in his tracks.
It's a shame, then, that Zwick and Herskovitz nonetheless make use of the romantic-comedy junkyard. Most unwieldy is Jamie's brother Josh (Josh Gad), who comes from that vulgar-best-friend template that's only gotten more use since Judd Apatow upped the ante in realistically guyish chatter. The trick, of course, is that Apatow (also a TV veteran) knows how to write funny, profane dialogue, and encourage improvisation of same. I'm not sure if it's bad writing or bad improv responsible for the dead-end comic-relief scenes of Gad yelling or sweating or yammering, but Zwick should've seen that not only does this character not work (Gad does his best/worst poor man's amalgam of Jack Black and Jonah Hill, nowhere near as funny as either), Josh has little to zero use in the movie's narrative. He barely talks to Jamie about Maggie; he just shows up for scenes that stop the movie dead in its tracks, the kind of character that never would've hacked it on My So-Called Life.
The movie recovers in the sense that we get plenty of scenes with just Gyllenhaal, Hathaway, and their chemistry, but it also fizzles out rather than sending you home with the best kind of love-story lift, the kind you might get from, say, a good Cameron Crowe movie. On television, Zwick and Herskovitz can sustain their characters and audience for hours and hours; Love and Other Drugs only manages some pleasant contact highs
.
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