Love & Other Drugs (2010)

Frankly, I was pleasantly surprised. At first I thought it would be a typical girls movie but this film showed me an amazing sides that I had not seen before. An amazing performance of a geniuses actors, amazing soundtrack and perfectly suited to scenes. And simply this entire movie is perfection.

Starting with the bad, this movie has no originality in its story, in no way can it lay claim to digressing from the overused Hollywood romantic movie plots. Boy finds sick girl who sets him straight, boy and girl separate for stupid reasons, boy finds out how much he loves girl, boy wins girl back with grandiose romantic speech. I also find the psychology and philosophy of the movie flawed. It treats the fear of being hurt or the fear of needing someone as inevitable ingredients or even likable qualities, where they are normally expressions of low self esteem and lacking courage. Realizing you do *need* each other is what brings you back together? Need is not love, need is selfish, where love is giving.I did not buy: the homeless guy's Prozac transformation, the drug agents and doctors milieu constantly partying like wall-street wolves, the convenient parkinson-conference across the street with all its positivity, the panic attack originating from telling someone you love him, the closing scene.Apart from that, I largely enjoyed the movie. Jake Gyllenhaal has found its most natural role as a slight nimrod with emotional deficiencies (adding depression in his 2015 movie Demolition), Anne Hathaway is breathtaking in her sensuality and sensibility, and also the supporting cast is wonderful. Combined with a resourceful soundtrack (The Specials, The Kinks, Fleetwood Mac, Regina Spektor, ...), it's hard to watch the movie without finding something to like.

Okay, so I decided on watching this film mostly to kill some time. Like, we all need some high budget, highly stereotypical romantic movie with foreseeable plot sometimes, don't we? Well, I got more than that, yet a lot less too... My biggest problem with this movie is that it's trying to be so many things at the same time, and I don't see it working out. In some scenes it's this really beautiful, well acted, highly emotional type of movie where I can really connect to the characters and understand their struggles. But then in the next scene it's trying to be some sort of stupid comedy with shallow 'jokes' about penises. I'm not saying that all movies based on this kind of comedy are dumb or bad, I'm just saying that in this particular movie, it's most certainly not working out. The acting is good, the scenery looks good, it's just confused. If they could have just tried to straight up the style of the movie, either way really, it could've been so much more than what it turned out to be.

Like I said, I really liked Jake and Anne, their acting was engaging. Although, I feel like this film was very sex obsessed, which is NOT good for any film. I understand that sex was necessary to this movies plot, but their is NO need for overloading on it. I mean I just felt a lot of it was unnecessary. I did feel sort of bored in parts, and some of the humor wasn't funny and just didn't really work. Jake Gylanhaal's fat friend in the film was very annoying and I felt like his character would have been better played by a different actor. Jake and Anne did have great chemistry in the film, which was essential to a movie like this. That was Love and other drugs's best quality was the lead stars's chemistry when on screen together. All in all it was a well acted, mildly entertaining, somewhat boring dramatic romance. 5/10