Love and Other Drugs
To say this is a change of pace from co-writer/director Edward Zwick is an understatement. True, he’s responsible for the beloved show “thirtysomething” and the film “…About Last Night” (based on a play by David Mamet), but Zwick is predominantly known as a director of large-scale films like “Blood Diamond,” “The Last Samurai,” “Defiance,” “Courage Under Fire,” “Glory,” and “The Seige.” That said, even those films are driven more by character than by action–even when Zwick falters, it’s one of the most admirable aspects of his films.
His latest is based on the novel Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman by Jamie Reidy and stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Jamie, a born salesman with a winning smile and a thing for charming the ladies. That gets him into trouble when we first see him at his job selling electronics. But it isn’t long before his brother Josh (Josh Gad) turns him on to being a pharmaceutical salesman; Jamie had previously dropped out of medical school, so he already knows the lingo, and with his mentor, Bruce (Oliver Platt), he begins working for Pfizer trying to push doctors like Hank Azaria’s Dr. Knight to prescribe Zoloft over Prozac. It’s not an easy transition, although Jamie’s ability to talk sweet to the ladies pays off. It’s when he meets a Parkinson’s patient named Maggie (Anne Hathaway) that his ability to win over a person is put to the test in a more substantial way.
Zwick is fully capable of handling such an intimate, character-driven story after all these years, although sometimes it’s not easy to find much genuine wit in this predictable story. That doesn’t make it a bad movie, just an unsuccessful romantic comedy. It’s a good thing he has leads with as much natural chemistry as “Brokeback Mountain” costars Gyllenhaal and Hathaway. Hathaway stands out in this honest and moving performance as a woman trying to live a normal life with an illness that sometimes makes doing so impossible. There is a moment in which we see her in a meeting with fellow Parkinson’s patients, and this moment, in particular, really gets to the heart of her dilemma with warmth and winning humor. She’s come a long way from “The Princess Diaries” films that made her a star. Hopefully we’ll see her more regularly in roles like this, and the days of films like “Bride Wars” are behind us.
