Love & Other Drugs Review

“Love & Other Drugs” has pretty much been billed as “The Movie in Which Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal Get Naked (That Isn’t “Brokeback Mountain.”)

Don’t believe me? Look at the poster.

The good news is that, by that standard, it ABSOLUTELY delivers. In fact, in the movie’s first hour, Hathaway is either naked or topless literally half of the time she’s on screen. (I remember making a mental note about how “Love & Other Drugs” was on its way to being the best movie of the year.)

The not-so-good news: director Edward Zwick tried to make about three different movies and didn’t always succeed.

“Love & Other Drugs” – based on the book “Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman” by Jamie Reidy – stars Gyllenhaal as Jamie Randall, a charismatic but underachieving young man who finds his calling as a slick pharmaceutical rep. He meets and falls for Maggie Murdock, an alluring free spirit – you can tell she’s a free spirit from her long, flowing curly hair, her bohemian loft, and the fact that she’s an artist – who also happens to have Parkinson’s disease.

The movie is also set in the mid-1990s. Just to make sure you’re aware of this, The Spin Doctors’ “Two Princes” blares over the opening credits, while “Independence Day” and “The X-Files” play on a TV screen. The characters even dance to the Macarena at one point. (Seriously!) Anyway, the reason the 90’s setting is important is because that’s around the time Viagra came on the scene and helped Jamie become a superstar in the pharmaceutical world.

And there’s the rub. “Love & Other Drugs” tries to be both a romantic drama about a flaky guy falling for a girl who is terrified of getting close to anyone AND a period examination/satire of the pharmaceutical boom in the mid-90’s.

The movie certainly has its moments, but doesn’t completely work on either of those fronts. I actually think there’s an interesting satire to be made out of the movie’s pharmaceutical angle (especially how they get doctors like the one played by Hank Azaria to push their product), but the movie never fully goes there because when you have leads with chemistry as good as Gyllenhaal and Hathaway’s, you’d be a fool not to utilize that.

In fact, that chemistry is ultimately what ends up salvaging a lacking romantic plot that careens from realism (you’ll shudder from recognition at some of the arguments) to exhausted movie clichés. (The guy gets in his car to go after the girl he loves, and declares his love in front of a bunch of strangers – I’m surprised she wasn’t going to the airport and that it wasn’t raining.)

Then there’s Josh Gad as Jamie’s loutish brother and as the crass comic relief I’m not exactly sure the movie needed. It’s almost as if Gad – with his masturbation and sex tape shenanigans – is acting in a different, stupider movie.

Still, it all ends up being about the two stars. Gyllenhaal is solid and soulful at the appropriate times, even if he wandered in manic “Tom Cruise-as-Jerry Maguire” territory every once in a while. Hathaway is also impressive, and the sunniness the actress naturally radiates helped balance out the character’s often downbeat tendencies.

Even though “Love & Other Drugs” ultimately winds up coming up a bit short, the movie is elevated by its two ridiculously charismatic – and sexy – stars.

Love & Other Drugs…B-