Love and Other Drugs (2010)

Merry Christmas, people who celebrate it!     The Christy pick was late this month.  I wish I could have some grand excuse, but I forgot to move it to the top of the queue until a week ago.  My bad.

Christy had told me that she found this movie "surprising" when she recommended it to me.  So I watched it intending to be surprised.  There were a number of elements that I found interesting but none that really jumped out and grabbed me so I called her up a minute ago and asked her to refresh me on what exactly she meant.

She said she wasn't expecting the first sex scene to be quite so in-your-face.  That, I will give her.  It is more graphic than I would have guessed.  I personally was not expecting Anne Hathaway to get naked as often as she does.  I guess something about sharing screen time with Jake Gyllenhaal makes her feel comfortable because she got topless in Brokeback Mountain too.

Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a pharmaceutical rep for Pfizer in the late 90's.  He meets Maggie (Anne Hathaway), a 26-year-old with Parkinson's, while trying to get her doctor (Hank Azaria) to switch his scrips from Prozac to Zoloft.  They set out simply using each other and then sort of haphazardly have a relationship.  Around this time, Jamie gets the Viagra account and his career takes off.  But does he want to, or even should he be, saddled with a girlfriend with a degenerative neurological disorder?

I found that this movie wasn't nearly as pandering as other romantic comedies Christy has forced me to watch.  It may have been better quality actors or just a better script, but it seemed much more realistic, like it could have worked out the way it was depicted between the two main characters.  Now that I think of it, I really didn't care for any of the movie except for the scenes with the two leads.  And the ones with his character's brother (Josh Gad).  Those were hilarious.