Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway star in this romantic comedy drama directed by Edward Zwick that plays out like a 21st century riff on Love Story.
Gyllenhaal is Jamie Randall, the cocky sales rep (for a pharmaceutical company named Pfizer) who meets and falls for Hathaway’s Maggie Murdock, a young woman suffering from an onset of Parkinson’s Disease, despite her young age. As the relationship blossoms into something neither party was expecting, Jamie struggles to get his product (an alternative to Prozac) in the right hands, despite using every trick in the book to schmooze and impress the right people. His partner-in-crime, in the world of sales, is Bruce (played by Oliver Platt), the best doctor they want to woo is Dr. Stan Knight (Hank Azaria) and the one extra complication comes in the shape of Jamie’s brother, Josh (Josh Gad), who has to sleep on Jamie’s sofa after his comfortable world of dot.com millions disappears thanks to a very greedy wife.
Love And Other Drugs takes a basic romantic movie, with all of the trials and tribulations you’d expect to crop up, and mixes it in with the story of a salesman who thinks he can sell anything to anybody. It sets itself during the time when Viagra came on the market (the screenplay was based on the book, “Hard Sell: The Evolution Of A Viagra Salesman” by Jamie Reidy) and brings that little, miraculous blue pill into the equation. It also features a fair bit of nudity and sexual content, so it may not be one to watch with your gran and your parents in the room.
All of that stuff, however, is just coating for something that would otherwise play out as a disease-of-the-week TV movie but it’s actually all done so slickly and with such great work from everyone involved that it becomes a perfect example of how to do this stuff well. The symptoms of Maggie’s affliction are not over-emphasised (she has good days and bad days) and information is fed out about the future pitfalls to come and coping strategies needed without the movie slowing down to a snail’s pace.
The screenplay, written by Zwick and two others working from the source material, is sharp and full of great banter, whether that’s between Jamie and Maggie, Jamie and the people he’s trying to sell to or Jamie and his brother. Sometimes, especially during the first 15-20 minutes, the dialogue feels a bit too hip and fake but things get easier to handle as Jamie eases into his salesman role, a role that fits him like a tailor-made suit.
Zwick may be used to directing scenes on a much bigger scale but he’s more than capable of getting intimate with the leads and making the right choices to support the characters (best displayed in the final scene featuring both Gyllenhaal and Platt enjoying a meal together).
The cast, a nice mix of young stars and older talent, all do a fantastic job. Gyllenhaal is cocky but likeable too, Hathaway is sharp but not in an altogether nasty way and the two together become a strange pairing that you end up rooting for. Oliver Platt and Hank Azaria – if I ever have anything bad to say about them in any movie then I’ll be very surprised, quality every time. Josh Gad is very funny in his role, Judy Greer does well with the little time she has and Gabriel Macht is enjoyably easy to hate as a competing salesman who seems unbeatable.
The whole package is just quality. It’s the same pill we’ve had many times before but it comes with a nice, sugar coating.
DIRECTOR: EDWARD ZWICK
CAST: JAKE GYLLENHAAL, ANNE HATHAWAY, HANK AZARIA, JOSH GAD, OLIVER PLATT
RUNTIME: 112 MINS APPROX
COUNTRY: USA
Film Rating: 
