CINEMA: Love And Other Drugs

An alternative and more appropriate title for this movie would be Love and life-threatening illnesses. Other examples of this genre include Iris (Alzheimer’s), Terms of Endearment (cancer), and the big daddy of them all, Love Story (leukaemia).

The film starts promisingly enough with charming chancer Jamie (Gyllenhaal) securing a job as a pharmaceuticals salesman just as Pfizer launch a little blue pill called Viagra. Jamie could sell tea to China and is soon schmoozing doctors’ secretaries in order to get his foot in the door and his drugs on their shopping lists and into their dispensaries. While having one of his habitual meet ups with Dr Stan (Azaria) he encounters Maggie (Hathaway), a free spirit who takes his breath away. They both claim they are just looking for a bit of fun but Jamie is soon smitten with Maggie who then has to admit her reluctance to commit is less to do with the way she feels about him and actually due to the fact she is suffering from early onset Parkinson’s Disease.

This is when the film crashes through the gears in order to slow down from its initial breezy, slightly ditzy mood (Jamie’s socially inept brother provides the ‘comedy’ element) to a more sombre atmosphere, especially as Maggie’s condition deteriorates. Although director Zwick handles the first half of the film with aplomb this sudden change in direction is jarring and makes what comes after it less emotionally charged than it should be. Also, there never seems to be the chemistry between Hathaway and Gyllenhaal to make you truly believe they would give up everything to commit to each other.

There are nice performances from Azaria, Oliver Platt as Jamie’s disillusioned supervisor, and Gabriel Macht, his biggest sales rival (who is making a killing from Prozac), but the film never displays the depth of emotion to effectively convey how this illness destroys the lives not only of those who suffer from it, but also of their loved ones.