Unlike Zwick’s previous attempts, however, Love & Other Drugs finds the director trying to fuse the debate (this time surrounding privatised health care and ‘big pharma’) with the genre of romantic comedy. Does it work? Well, in truth, not really. However, the film hits its first significant stumbling block when we are introduced to Jamie’s family during a ‘quirky’ family dinner. It seems that Zwick expects us to buy the fact that Gyllenhaal, a criminally underused George Segal and the hyperactive, Seth Rogen/Jonah Hill-hybrid Jason Gad are all somehow related. Not only do we not believe that they’re related, but the actors themselves don’t give the impression of believing it either. And that’s a fundamental problem that runs throughout the movie – a lack of credibility and any sort of emotional truth. Despite this credibility gap, the early parts of the movie do at least have some sort of pace and fun to them. Jamie’s rise through the Pfizer chemical ranks is quite well done, and his eventual graduation to on-the-road salesman alongside Pfizer vet Bruce Winston (the ever excellent Oliver Platt, giving the best performance in the movie by a mile) is quite entertaining, as are his interactions with Hank Azaria’s appropriately cynical Dr Stan Knight. However, it’s with the introduction of Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway) that things start to go seriously awry with the movie. Maggie is an artist you see, although an artist who never seems to sell any work or do anything other than screw inappropriate men during nameless and commitment free assignations. But wait! Maggie is more than just a shag-happy, free-sprit artist. She is – wait for it! – a shag-happy, free spirit artist with Parkinson’s disease. Is it the story of a heartless salesman finding love and responsibility in the arms of a woman with serious health issues? Or perhaps it’s about a woman blighted by disease who can’t forge meaningful relationships with men because of her illness? Maybe we’re watching a veiled meditation on the moral failings of the American pharmaceutical and health sectors? Or could we even be watching a gross-out comedy between two ill-matched flat mates that’s the missing link between The Odd Couple, Planes Trains and Automobiles and Superbad? In fact, what we get is an unholy mixture of all those elements which never quite coheres or manages to make a cogent point about any of the issues it toys with. But despite those isolated moments, when viewed as a whole, the film simply doesn’t work. Anne Hathaway may be perky, Jason Gad intermittently amusing and Oliver Platt hugely enjoyable, but none of them ever seem like they’re really in the same movie. And the ultimate responsibility for that falls at the feet of Edward Zwick, who continues to be one of Hollywood’s most frustratingly inconsistent film makers. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.
