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Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway) are worth the watch in Love and Other Drugs, an Rated film

By Maggie Scott

I’ve never seen a movie implode.  Grind to a halt, yes.  Bury itself in absurdities, certainly.  Sadly, after starting literally with a bang (of the sexual sort) and leading the viewer on with ultimately unfulfilled intimations of a thought-provoking expose on the medical and prescription industries, Love and Other Drugs suddenly deflates.

It was like a soufflé collapsing into a crater of soggy sap about how a debilitating, fatal disease might ask too much of love. Deflated, as well, are the viewers’ initially gung-ho feelings for lead characters Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway) after viewing invigorating early scenes of them falling in four-alarm lust.  When we first meet electronics-salesman Jamie, he’s an exuberant, skilled and carefree lothario.

He’s rejected the “my son the doctor” expectations of his parents (George Segal and the late Jill Clayburgh, in split-second on-screen roles).  Next-best-thing—since he’s young, personable and extraordinarily handsome—is to become a drug rep for pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, no less.  Initial scenes of Jamie at sales-pitch boot camp show promise of further satirical edge.

You lean forward, wanting to hear something indicting about this world of high-gloss, high-pressure catering to doctors and patients.  But, the screenwriters pull up short and take a soft-sell, slapstick slant.  Realizing he has to fine-tune his approach for securing face-to-face with docs, after continual stone-walling as he and Bruce, his sales partner (Oliver Platt), make the rounds, Jamie applies some irresistible wooing to the office staff of one Dr. Knight (Hank Azaria), with whom Jamie gains a foothold and a persuasive meeting.

From there, he sabotages a rep from Lily, by tossing the guy’s competing drug samples in a dumpster, which is being “dived” by a homeless man. As the prescriptions and his “quota” increase, it appears that Jamie’s got just the right prescription for the good life; until he takes a hit of Maggie, the doe-eyed beauty he meets one day while he’s masquerading as an intern “shadowing” Dr. Knight.

Maggie’s got a chip on her shoulder and a tremor in her hand.  She’s dealing with Parkinson’s disease—not just physically, but emotionally; as she lets the disease keep her at arm’s length from commitment. At first, her condition stays in the background, as she and Jamie let the urgency of heedless satisfaction of desire obscure and delay facing her reality.

Eventually, she’s running hot and cold, and hostile, as she flips between all sweet loving and histrionic melt-downs when she realizes Jamie’s love could obligate him in the future to being her nursemaid.  Meanwhile, Jamie learns about a little blue pill that he “could sell the s*#!t out of.”  Whenever it appears that the story is about to take some shots at how health care is handled in this country, it takes a detour into the superfluous and inane—most often involving Jamie’s brother Josh (Josh Gad), a “fat dope.”

Parkinson’s is given vague and unbelievable attention, and the romance sinks to taking on shades of such films as Love Story, The Graduate and Sweet November (Sandy Dennis as a terminally ill woman signing up each man interested in her to share her life for one and only one month).

Sharing between them four of the most hypnotic eyes in show business, Gyllenhaal and Hathaway are certainly worth the more than “one hour relieving the pain of being you” (Maggie’s sarcastic pickup line to Jamie) it will take to enjoy their love scenes and undisguised thespian talents.  Rated R for nudity, sexual situations, language and some drug use.

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