Love and Other Drugs

I really had no interest to see this movie. I like both Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhall (then half-way through the movie made the Brokeback Mountain connection) but this just wasn't my thing.  I ended up seeing it with a couple guy friends who were intent on all the nudity.

"Nudity," I asked? "Isn't this rated PG-13?" I received a resounding no. It's rated R for good reason: all the nudity. I don't quite know what people say when they don't mind nudity for art. I say that too and I'm not sure what it means but I do know that wasn't what this was. It wasn't even strippers where you assume someone will be naked at some point. It's just Hathaway and Gyllenhall having sex... all the time... everywhere.

So Gyllenhall is a pharmaceutical rep who is trying to boost sales for Zoloft against the competitor Prozac. He meets Hathaway who is a 26 year old with Stage 1 Parkinson's. They begin a strictly sex relationship that neither one wants to go any farther but situations occur that might change that...

Gyllenhall's character works for Pfizer, a legitimate pharmaceutical company who does produce Zoloft. The went on to produce Viagra. So this would seem like a true story. I don't recall Love and Other Drugs being promoted as a true story or based on true events. At the beginning of the credits there is no plaque describing what happened to the real people. At the end of the credits there is a line that references ... blah blah blah... this movie while based on actual people and events have been characterized for this film... blah blah blah... I became a bit confused at this information and I'd hate to do research on this movie because I honestly didn't care about it that much.

It did not ride the line between comedy and drama very well. I didn't know what to think when things got serious... Am I supposed to take this seriously now? Or are you going to make a joke of it? I didn't like being jerked around like that. Part of this problem came from Gyllenhall's character's brother (Josh Gad). The two are night and day different and I didn't know what to make of it.

I was not too impressed with this movie. But if you just want to go to see Anne Hathaway naked than this is the movie for you. Be warned that this movie takes place in 1996, so the phones are laughable and the music is the soundtrack from my middle school days (that might have been my favorite part!).