Love and Other Drugs
Sun Theatre Yarraville, 22/12/2010
Status: Behind by 5 films
You may have heard about all the sex in Love and Other Drugs, that it’s really edgy and bold? Well, yes and no. There’s a fraction of a scene that sums it all up beautifully: we’ve just seen Maggie (ANNE HATHAWAY, Get Smart) and Jamie (JAKE GYLLENHAAL, Brokeback Mountain, Zodiac) have quite a lot of hot sex (and in the process, seen a fair bit of the leads as well) and they are now laying around all smug and post-coital. They’re naked and on top of the sheets, but Gyllenhaal’s leg is propped up in such a way as to obscure both his and Hathaway’s pink bits. The film is edgy and bold to show as much as it does… but not so edgy or bold that it’ll risk an R rating. It’s coyness masquerading as frankness, which sits uneasily with me.
Jamie is a drug rep for Pfizer who make Zoloft (the direct competitor to Provac) and now Viagra. Maggie is an artist who suffers from early onset Parkinson’s disease. They’re both relationship-dysfunctional in their own special ways (that seem to involve sleeping with a fantasy amount of people) until they hook up and inevitably fall in love.
The two absurdly attractive leads sell the sex better than they sell the romance but their performances are sound and energetic. The pace is lively and the music jaunty – but the frank/coy thing and a horribly botched soppy ending left me uneasy and unsatisfied.
