Maggie (Hathaway) is an alluring free spirit who won't let anyone - or anything - tie her down. But she meets her match in Jamie (Gyllenhaal) whose relentless and nearly infallible charm serve him well with the ladies and in the cutthroat world of pharmaceutical sales. Maggie and Jamie's evolving relationship takes them both by surprise as they find themselves under the influence of the ultimate drug: love. Based on Jamie Reidy's memoir Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman.
A smug, womanising pharmaceutical sales rep and a melodramatic, self-obsessed sufferer of Parkinson's Disease might not sound like the most appealing leads for a romantic comedy. And on paper, setting such a romance against the backdrop of Big-Pharma blockbuster-drug-development in the 1990s might not sound like the most compelling subject matter.
However, if you were to give Love and Other Drugs a miss on the basis of that bare-bones description, you'd be doing yourself a disservice, because it's one of the most refreshingly adult, honest and endearing rom-coms to have come along in quite some time.
Undoubtedly, the two lead actors - Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko; Source Code) and Anne Hathaway (The Devil Wears Prada; The Dark Knight Rises) - elevate their roles from what could have risked being fairly unsympathetic characters to something far more interesting. Both Jamie Randall and Maggie Murdock feel like genuine, three-dimensional personalities who go through real growth and change over the course of the story, and who can't be pigeonholed into the usual set of standard character conventions - and this immediately makes the film far more interesting than your average rom-com fare.
The film is also fairly uncompromising when it comes to the realities of adult relationships: namely, sex. There's plenty in the way of nudity and sexual scenes here, but none of it feels gratuitous, and it all serves to add depth to the characters and to enrich the story, rather than coming off as an excuse to see a couple of beautiful people with no clothes on.
Also interesting is the subplot that deals with Jamie working as a sales rep for Pfizer whilst the company launches its Viagra sex-enhancing drug. Whilst there are plenty of occasions on which this element of the story is played for laughs - including an amusingly embarrassing trip to Accident & Emergency, and an over-the-top pool party aimed at winning over prescribing doctors - there are also several points at which the story is brave enough to examine the morality of pharmaceutical companies choosing to prioritise money-making over trying to help patients in genuine need.
In particular, a scene in which Maggie attends a support group for Parkinsons's sufferers provides some of the most heartfelt - and heartbreakingly honest - explorations of terminal illness that I've seen on film, and it's a this point that you start to realise that Love and Other Drugs is far more than just your run-of-the-mill rom-com. But all this is achieved without the film ever becoming too self-regarding or worthy, and without ever sacrificing its core character development for the sake of promoting its message.
Happily, the movie isn't dour and serious all of the time. As the relationship between Jamie and Maggie blooms, there are some beautiful scenes of convincing happiness and joy that accurately reflect that honeymoon period of being in love with someone for the first time. There's also a standout supporting turn from Josh Gad as Jamie's brother, who provides most of the movie's laugh-out-loud moments (even if there's a nagging sense that the filmmakers would have preferred to get Jack Black to play the role instead).
By the time the final scenes roll around, the movie has wrong-footed you enough times that there's a genuine sense of jeopardy in seeing how Jamie and Maggie's relationship plays out - and without spoiling things, it's fair to say that it goes in a direction that some viewers might not necessarily be expecting. However, it's a completely satisfying ending for a film that manages to tick off a lot of the core requirements of a romantic movie - without ever feeling as though it's doing so, and without forcing itself into boxes in which it doesn't belong - and which has a lot more heart and soul than most of the cookie-cutter rom-coms that Hollywood tends to churn out.
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Please note this is a region B Blu-Ray and will require a region B or region free Blu-Ray player in order to play. Handsome and charming pharmaceutical rep Jamie (Jake Gyllenhaal) falls head over heels for radiant free spirit Maggie (Anne Hathaway) and together the two people who never thought they would fall in love discover that their intense chemistry is more powerful than any drug on the market. Edward Zwick is best known for historical epics such as LEGENDS OF THE FALL THE LAST SAMURAI and DEFINACE so LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS marks something of a dramatic change of direction for director.
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