Since most romantic comedies take place in a perky, generic present, you may be surprised to see a note in the opening titles informing you that the action in “Love & Other Drugs” starts in 1996. Why so specific? Is there some world-historical event looming on the horizon that will change the characters’ lives forever? Or does the director, Edward Zwick, simply want to evoke a bygone-but-not-too-distant era when a young person could have a lot of fun and make a lot of money without worrying too much about whatever it is young people nowadays worry about (war, terrorism, recession, Facebook)?
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It’s the Relationships, Stupid (November 21, 2010) The answer is, to some extent, both. The year 1996 was, among other things, that of “Jerry Maguire,” and in its freewheeling, fast-moving first act, “Love & Other Drugs” seems to be staking out similar thematic territory. (It also has some affinities with the more recent and somber “Up in the Air”).
We are introduced to Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal), a fellow brimming with self-confidence and cheerful aggression but not quite sure what to do with himself besides sell stuff (home electronics and then pharmaceuticals) and sleep with a lot of women. The underachieving son of an eminent Chicago doctor — Jamie’s sister is also in medicine, while his brother is a geeky software millionaire — Jamie has more charm than ambition. He’s a Clinton-era free spirit: feckless, a bit lost, waiting to see what kind of luck or love comes his way, but never doubting that something will.
Which brings us to the world-historical event that makes Jamie’s fortune and takes some pressure off the screenwriters (who are Mr. Zwick, his longtime collaborator Marshall Herskovitz and Charles Randolph, author of “The Life of David Gale,” among other things.) In 1998, you may recall, the real-life company Pfizer, the fictional Jamie’s employer, began marketing sildenafil citrate under the brand name Viagra. The rest is late-night talk show monologue history, and the filmmakers are not too proud to stoop to some easy, naughty and in some cases very funny jokes and gags, including an extended sequence involving the drug’s most notorious side effect.
Supply your own double entendre here. I’m not really allowed to. But “Love & Other Drugs” does not really stand or fall on the basis of its smutty, sexual humor. It does have some elements likely to be cherished by connoisseurs of coarse laughs, notably Jamie’s younger brother, Josh (Josh Gad), who is the tubby, shlubby, erotically challenged (if not downright gross) sidekick every big-screen player seems to need.
But low farce is only one substance in the film’s dispensary. “Love & Other Drugs” is a sometimes intoxicating, sometimes headache-inducing cocktail: a sweet, libidinous love story; a candid comedy of bedroom and workplace manners; and, most bravely, if also most jarringly, a medical melodrama involving a chronic and very serious disease.
Assigned to a rusty, reasonably picturesque stretch of the American heartland (and to a supervisor played by the reliably put-upon Oliver Platt), Jamie tries to persuade a hot-shot doctor (Hank Azaria) to prescribe Pfizer’s drug Zoloft instead of Prozac. The task has some perils (being punched out by a rival played by Gabriel Macht), and a few perks as well (going to bed with one of the doctor’s receptionists, played by Judy Greer). It also brings about a cute meeting with Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway), who sees right through Jamie’s game (not long after he peeks at her breasts) and plays along with it anyway.
Maggie is an artist (she seems to have moved into Melissa’s loft from “thirtysomething,” which remains Mr. Zwick and Mr. Herskovitz’s best work), an adventurer, and a bit of a cynic in matters of the heart. She also has early-onset Parkinson’s disease, an affliction that casts a complicated shadow over her relationship with Jamie and gives the movie a gravity it does not quite know how to handle. Now and then she experiences tremors and bouts of self-pity, but most of all her illness makes her wary of growing too close to Jamie and provides an explanation for her no-strings, commitment-shy approach to intimacy.
Ms. Hathaway and Mr. Gyllenhaal are frequently delightful to watch, and their ease together is a rebuke to the self-conscious, emotionally cautious protocols of modern movie romance. They look good in what might be considered period clothes — wayfarer sunglasses and crisp suits for him, waifish ensembles of knitted layers for her — and also in their birthday suits. Jamie and Maggie have fun in the sack, and on the floor, and wherever else the mood strikes. Their intense and almost immediate sexual connection opens the door to emotions that neither is quite prepared for but that neither wants to resist, and the actors are at their most appealing and persuasive when they explore the borderland between ardor and ambivalence.
But there is an asymmetry in the way the characters are conceived that undermines the film’s credibility. We know a lot about Jamie’s temperament, his ambitions and his background. His parents, played by George Segal and Jill Clayburgh (in her last film appearance), are on screen briefly, but they ground Jamie in a social and familial milieu and help us understand who he is.
Maggie, in contrast, is less a person than a sentimental, fairy-tale conceit: a tragic affliction, an artistic attitude and an unchecked libido conjured out of thin air to test her lover’s resolve and deepen his soul. That she often seems like more is entirely to Ms. Hathaway’s credit.
And it is to Mr. Zwick’s credit that “Love & Other Drugs” almost works, sustaining its blend of melodrama, low comedy and graceful wit for a good hour or so, but then succumbing to treacle, evasion and maudlin convention at the end. Unfortunately the effects of the movie, therapeutic and intoxicating though they are, wear off before it is over.
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