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Love & Other Drugs: wild abandon marks uneven dramedy

January 2, 2012 By

Love & Other Drugs is a zany, thought-provoking dramedy about romance, mortality and Big Pharma. Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway star as a couple falling into lust and love.

Big Pharma career begins

Youth, good luck and ambition rule as Jamie Randall (Gyllenhaal) embarks on a new career in pharmaceutical sales. “It’s the only entry level job where you start at $100K,” his software millionaire brother Josh (Josh Gad) marvels.

Jamie meets sarcastic, sexy Maggie Murdock (Hathaway) while he’s shadowing Dr. Knight (Hank Azaria) during rounds. She bares her breast as he looks on. She has early onset Parkinson’s disease.

Salesman seeks romance

When Bohemian artist Maggie discovers that Jamie is a salesman and not an intern, she decks him in the parking lot.  The two won’t admit it, but it’s love at first fight.

Ravenous sex and manic energy give way to melodrama in the film’s second half.  Sex is the drug, an escape from life for both Jamie and Maggie. This becomes an uneven seesaw of tragedy and everyday triumphs.

Geeky Josh adds smutty gags after a breakup with his girlfriend forces him to camp out on Jamie’s couch.

Drama and slapstick don’t mix

Director Edward Zwick fails to stretch rom-com into medical drama.  In Big Pharma’s world, disease is the focus, not the patient.  Zwick raises awareness, but zaniness no longer fits.

Jamie loves Maggie much to his terror. He’s never told a woman he loves her before.  Does Maggie love Jamie?  Jamie meets the husband of a stage four Parkinson’s victim.  Does he really want to stay with Maggie?

It’s 1998, the age of Big Pharma and medical miracles. Viagra is about to be released. Jamie is poised for super success. The little blue pill is the drug everyone wants!

Seeking Parkinson’s cure

Oliver Platt is super as Jamie’s company mentor who dreams of topping sales records so he can settle down with his family in Chicago.

Maggie gives up. Jamie has dragged her to lectures around the country. Progress and even cures are documented with chelation therapy and other approaches.  Maggie insists there is no cure. She only believes in drugs.

Gyllenhaal and Hathaway needed better direction here. Nude scenes for both actors and plenty of foul language add to the bumpy ride.

Maggie becomes health advocate

Maggie is lovely and wary (with abundant close-ups of Hathaway’s radiant grin). Later she becomes a health advocate for the elderly.  It’s a big stretch for wisecracking Maggie.

Fine supporting roles are delivered by George Segal as Jamie’s successful doctor dad, and the late Jill Clayburgh as his radiant mom.

The film is loosely based on Hard Sell, a memoir by former Viagra sales rep Jamie Reidy. (3 out of 5 stars)

If you like Love and Other Drugs, you might enjoy:  50/50; Restless.

Love and Other Drugs   2010  /  R  /  1 hour, 53 min

Cast:  Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Oliver Platt, Hank Azaria, Josh Gad, Gabriel Macht, Jill Clayburgh, George Segal

Director:  Edward Zwick

Genre:  Romantic Comedy, Dramedy

Filed Under: Awaken, Change of heart, Compassion, Heal, Learn & Grow, Transformation Tagged With: , , , ,

2012: Cusack, Ejiofor deliver heart-filled heroism

January 2, 2012 By

In 2012, John Cusack scrambles to save his family as Earth shifts big-time. The terrifying adventure drama is based on Mayan prophecy.

Impending disaster

Geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is ordered to the President’s office when he discovers that impending global changes will happen in a matter of hours.

Ejiofor (Children of Men; SALT) and Cusack model love and concern for others as cataclysms unfold. Beyond all the mayhem, the theme of this film is love.

Love rocks the world

Cusack plays Jackson Curtis, a writer who moonlights as a limo driver.  A heartbroken everyman, he lost his family to his obsession with writing. Jackson’s world has been rocked by divorce in poignant parallel to the world around him.

When Jackson and his kids trespass in a restricted area at Yellowstone National Park, they meet enigmatic radio DJ Charlie Frost (very real and funny Woody Harrelson). Jackson also meets Adrian (who convinces the U.S. Army to release his favorite sci-fi author).

Earth changes forecast

Frost is attuned to what’s going on (a copy of Your Immortal Reality by Gary Renard sits on his desk). He monitors the radical changes happening under the Earth’s crust and dares to talk about them. Despite his wild-eyed ravings, he speaks from the heart. Jackson is intrigued. 

2012 is based on Mayan prophecies about widespread Earth changes occurring around the year 2012.  The changes and how to prepare for them are being described by the shaman Little Grandmother and others.

Humanity scrambles to survive

President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover) decides to stay with the American people, but makes sure his daughter Dr. Laura Wilson (Thandie Newton) will have a spot on one of the huge arks built to ride out massive tsunamis.

Three hi-tech Noah’s arks promise safety for a lucky few, but the flight to reach them is perilous as the Earth’s crust shifts.

Excellent special effects

Over 100 artists created the film’s 1300 visual effects (VFX) shots. Spectacular decimation swallows Los Angeles, Yellowstone National Park, Washington D.C., Saint Peter’s Basilica and The Himalayas. The film is riveting at over two and a half hours.

Oliver Platt takes advantage of the crisis as ballsy White House chief of staff Carl Anheuser. Carl takes over in the absence of the President, but not without a challenge from Adrian.

Repopulating the planet is paramount, Carl insists, but saving his own skin seems to be his primary motive. Ironically, billionaires and governments have paid in advance for precious tickets.

Romance survives

Romance persists when Laura meets Adrian on board a plane heading for China. Amanda Peet plays Jackson’s reluctant ex-wife Kate with their two children in tow.

Beyond its Hollywood façade, 2012 asks us to honor the earth and to love ourselves and one another. (5 out of 5 stars)

If you like 2012, you might enjoy: 2012: Time for Change; 2012: The Odyssey; Thrive.

2012     2009  /  PG-13  /  2 hours, 38 min

Cast:  John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson, George Segal

Director:  Roland Emmerich

Genre:  Action, Adventure, Drama

Filed Under: Awaken, Character, Compassion, Forgiveness, Heal, Inspiration, Learn & Grow, Transformation Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Please Give: Keener balances comedy of wealth, guilt, generosity

December 31, 2011 By

Nicole Holofcener writes and directs Please Give, a tart, touching indie drama about generosity and selfishness.

Director examines wealth, poverty

Holofcener (Lovely & Amazing, Friends With Money) explores familiar territory in her latest film, showing the comedy and pathos of haves and have nots in Manhattan.

Women’s breasts are readied for scanning by mammogram technician Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) in the film’s striking opening scene. Pale, serious Rebecca comforts and assists an unending parade of patients. A compulsive giver, she’s not receiving much.

Rebecca lives with her elderly grandmother and rarely goes out, not even to see the fall foliage upstate. Breasts are neither beautiful nor repulsive to her. They’re “tubes that can get infected.”

Holofcener shows the interplay between two Manhattan families, reflecting America’s uneasy balance of wealth and poverty.

Anatomy of a Manhattan couple

Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) are a wealthy couple that resell contemporary antiques in their city showroom. The two live and work together all day long, an arrangement bound to strain any marriage.

Kate guiltily plunks a $20 bill into the hand of any homeless person she meets. Opportunities to profit and feel guilty about it abound as Kate and Alex acquire estate furniture bargains from grieving adults. Meanwhile their 15-year-old daughter Abby (refreshing Sarah Steele) begs for a pair of $200 designer jeans.

Living next door is 91-year-old Andra (Ann Guilbert). In space-hungry Manhattan, Kate and Alex have already purchased Andra’s apartment and plan to expand their living space after she dies. Meanwhile they are genuinely polite to the cantankerous neighbor and her granddaughters Rebecca (Hall) and sexpot Mary (Amanda Peet).

A neighbor’s real estate

Guilbert is best known as the Petrie’s neighor Millie Helper on The Dick Van Dyke Show.  Peet (Something’s Gotta Give; Martian Child; 2012) portrays Mary as the newest incarnation of needy, needling Andra. She’s just as selfish as Rebecca is selfless.

Kate and Alex’s birthday party for Andra, reluctantly attended by Rebecca and Mary, offers a high point of comic realism. It is here where Alex’s mid-life crisis begins to manifest.

Several performances delight in this often uncomfortable film. Guilbert manages to be sympathetic even as she delivers her barbs. Lois Smith is radiant as wise Mrs. Portman, a patient who befriends Rebecca. Thomas Ian Nicholas plays Mrs. Portman’s fresh-faced nephew Eugene.

Keener develops tough, sensitive character

Keener has starred in each of Holofcener’s feature films as a tough yet vulnerable woman exploring life’s ironies. As Kate, Keener is so edgy that she succeeds in making moviegoers squirm.

Spiritual teacher Fredrick Lenz said, “When you do something for someone else, it’s for you. When you do something for yourself, it’s for someone else.”

Kate and Rebecca, the two most generous characters in Please Give, finally discover that they are good people who deserve to be happy. (4 out of 5 stars)

If you like Please Give, you might enjoy: The Kids Are All Right; Midnight in Paris.

Please Give 2010 / PG-13 / 1 hr, 30 min

Cast Overview: Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Sarah Steele, Ann Guilbert

Director: Nicole Holofcener

Genres: Drama, Indie, Comedy

Filed Under: Awaken, Character, Compassion, Current Affairs, Forgiveness, Heal Tagged With: , , , , ,