Love and Other Drugs

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Jamie, a charismatic person who uses his charms to sell pharmaceuticals for Pfizer. Part of this movie, then, is a dig at the lucrative pharmaceutical industry, and the nepotistic relationship between doctors and pharmaceutical sales representatives. But overlying what purports to be an exposé of the moral bankruptcy of the US "medical community" is a personal tale of Jamie's own initial amorality, his lust for wealth, sex, and personal gain, and how he actually matures as a person. In contrast, the industry he works in becomes ever more immature and self-centred, as epitomized (in the movie) by the run-away success of the Pfizer-developed drug, Viagra. Ultimately, sex itself is shown to be one of the drugs that one can be addicted to, often as an escape from one's pain, or a mask for one's own insecurities. And like any drug, it has a transient effect and is not ultimately satisfying.
Jamie then meets Maggie, played by Anne Hathaway, and they hit it off immediately because they both seem to want the same thing: casual sex. But Maggie has early-onset Parkinson's disease, and she uses casual liaisons to keep people away from seeing her vulnerability and fear, and also to feel wanted. Her deepest fear is that she will end up alone and abandoned because of the burden that her illness would put on those around her. So, she deeply longs to be loved, and uses sex as a poor substitute for it. But at the same time she is afraid to be loved because that means she would have to be less independent, and actually accept the help of another person, and eventually have to rely on him. This requires trust, of course, and that is possibly what we fear most about love. Fear of trusting another, and so, being vulnerable not only extends to our human relationships, but I think, it may also explain why so many of our contemporaries are afraid to have faith in God, and accept his love. We're so conditioned by society to be independent and self-reliant, or wounded by past experiences, that we might no longer know how to trust another, and be loved, even by God who is Love.

Jamie, on the other hand, does not know how to love. He only knows how to take pleasure, and aim for his own ambitious goals, and he will do anything to achieve his desires. And so, when he tells Maggies he loves her - the first time he'd ever done so in his life - the movie shows him frightened, trembling, and confused. But this realization is the first step towards his becoming human. For he finds himself, and indeed, we all do as persons, in loving others. And so, Jamie, drawn initially by the 'bait' of lust and sexual pleasure, learns to love truly. A turning point comes when Jamie encounters a man whose wife is in the advanced stages of Parkinson's. He recounts with emotion the ravages of the illness, and says that if he had known beforehand, he would not have married his wife. And one wonders if Jamie - who is desperate to find a cure for Maggie's illness for his own sake - would do the understandable thing, and run away from the relationship.

But in the end - after a few more twists to the tale - he doesn't, because he has learnt what it really means to love another, and he sacrifices a much-desired lucrative job promotion to stay with Maggie, and care for her. Hence, in both persons, we see a movement in their characters as they mature as individuals, relinquish fear and selfish pleasures, and learn to grow in the virtue of love itself. What makes this movie compelling, then, is this movement, and the movie allows us to glimpse a part of their pilgrimage of life. And I think, if we're honest, we'll see something of ourselves, and our own moral growth in them. So, seen in a positive light, this movie might well speak to our generation, which is caught up in the transient pleasures of sex and other drugs, and maybe give them pause to reflect on just how much more beautiful, enduring, and powerful love is.

Casts:

Jake Gyllenhaal as Jamie Randall

Anne Hathaway as Maggie Murdock

Josh Gad as Josh Randall

Judy Greer as Cindy

Gabriel Macht as Trey Hannigan

Oliver Platt as Bruce Jackson

Hank Azaria as Dr. Knight

Something Borrowed

Something Borrowed is classic romantic comedy formula. Young woman is getting married to a dashing young man. Trouble is the girls friend, you know the hopeless romantic friend is in love with the fiance' and has been for years. In fact, she introduced the two lovebirds to each other years ago in college. But as the wedding draws near, sparks are flying where they shouldn't. Will everything work out? That's Something Borrowed.

This stars Kate Hudson as Darcy, the completely self-absorbed fiance'. Darcy is so annoying, that you wonder how anyone can stomach her for an hour, let alone a lifetime. She is a rich, good time party girl that is best friends with Rachel, (Ginnifer Goodwin) since childhood. Trouble is Rachel is in love with Darcy's fiance', Dex (Colin Eggelston). Rachel is the 30 year old boring, lawyer who has none of the vivaciousness as Darcy. But Dex is falling for Rachel. Let's be honest. This has been done to death. 

Hudson, could not be worse. She's hard to watch here and grates on your nerves I think even more than the director would want. Overall, Hudson is just not funny anymore. She's limited, and I think has worn out her welcome in the romantic comedy arena. In her slight defense, the writing here is abysmal and not well thought out. They ask Darcy to be irritating and drunk most of the time, and that's limiting for any actor. There is an attempt at the end for Darcy to grow a heart, but it's too late.

Now the silver lining. Ginnifer Goodwin is a star in the making. She has been in a few flicks, including Walk The Line, and He's Just Not That Into You. One great, and one bad respectively. But she is wonderful. Here again, she is lovely, alluring and wonderfully awkward as the lovable loser, love starved young woman. She does this so well. She is so easy to watch on screen, just as she was in He's Just Not That Into You. She was the star there, and here. You can't help but love her here, even as you're trying to choke down this movie, as it goes down sideways.

This formula here is so old. They try to spruce it up. And all they do is make you hate these characters more than like them. As this story stumbles down the aisle, you find you are hoping they all drive off a cliff in some kind of terrible misfortune so we can go home. But that does not happen. But I will tell you this, you will more than likely hate the end of this movie. It tries hard to make you feel something for these backstabbing New Yorkers. And it attempts to be a coming of age flick, and a "things in life change flick." But it fails. Luckily, this movie will get lost in the Thor vacuum that you'll hear loudly this weekend.

Super 8

J.J. Abrams imitates to flatter with Super 8, an homage to the seminal science fiction films of Steven Spielberg that succumbs to empty nostalgic pandering. As with his Star Trek, Abrams's latest puts a modern spin on classical material, though here reinvention isn't the goal so much as slavish duplication embellished with muscular CG effects. 

It's akin to returning to a cinematic womb of Spielbergian father-son issues, suburban households under extraterrestrial strain, and teen romance, friendship, and maturation via out-of-this-world circumstances. The effect of such a modus operandi is initial coziness quickly giving way to disheartening familiarity, with Abrams's own preoccupations (if he had any to begin with) becoming subsumed beneath the root themes, dynamics, and imagery of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and, more fundamental still, E.T. Set in a small Ohio town in 1979, this is a trial-by-fire tale of middle school kids falling in love, strengthening relationships, and reconciling with distant parents that's so clearly modeled after the work of its spiritual godfather (and producer) that, though Abrams's comprehension of his chosen genre tropes is exhaustive and his technical skill is impressive enough to create stirring atmospheric déjà vu, there's little genuine heart to his drama. Instead, in a manner similar to Gus Van Sant's Psycho, it's merely a high-resolution photocopy devoid of its revered predecessors' soul.

After a four-months-prior funereal prologue, Abrams's story finds wannabe creature-feature makeup artist Joe (Joel Courtney) still reeling from the accidental death of his mom, which has left him in the custody of father Jack (Kyle Chandler), a police deputy who—as evidenced by his suggestion that Joe attend baseball camp—neither knows nor cares to understand his son. Joe embarks on summer vacation intent on making a zombie movie with portly friend and budding auteur Charles (Riley Griffiths), whose hectic, sibling-overloaded home blatantly strives to recall the residence of E.T.'s Elliott, whom bike-riding Joe also deliberately resembles. 

Filming at an abandoned train station late one night with new cast member and fetching Erika Eleniak look-alike Alice (Elle Fanning), the production crew winds up running for their lives once a speeding locomotive is deliberately derailed—leading to fierce computerized calamity—by the truck of their middle school biology teacher. Soon, the Air Force, led by Nelec (Noah Emmerich), is on the scene and canvassing the town, casting evil military-men shadows while searching for a monster that, as later events reveal, has scared away all local canines and is intent on collecting the area's every electronic and mechanical device, thus causing mysterious power outages.

Abrams keeps this beast off screen for as long as he possibly can, to the point that Super 8—reminiscent of Cloverfield (which he produced)—becomes something of a giant tease. The idea, naturally, is to generate tension from fear of the unknown, and the director does scrape up minor suspense from a few quiet-quieter-silent-LOUD scenes in which only a flurry of gargantuan limbs can be spied. Moreover, this strategy pays early dividends simply because it allows more time to be spent on Joe and his friends, whom Abrams delineates with quick, clear strokes, as well as Joe's growing bond with Alice, whose drunken father Louis (Ron Eldard) was unwittingly responsible for Joe's mom's death, and whom Fanning embodies with a mixture of intimidating radiance and deep humanism. A fantasy vision of female perfection, Fanning's Alice meshes nicely with Joe, a somewhat withdrawn kid nonetheless unashamed to show his dream girl his collection of hand-constructed models. And Super 8 works best when simply lingering in their presence, allowing them to produce a flicker of sincere yearning, fear, excitement and mournful sadness that Abrams's overt attempts at Spielbergian melodrama can't muster, as when the young couple watch a mawkish home movie of Joe and his mom.

Joe and Alice's chaste romance is a vehicle for healing and reconciliation between both kids and fathers, as well as single men alienated by grief and resentment. However, save for one tense exchange between Joe and his dad in which a comment about responsibility resounds with multiple implications, this thread is thinly sketched by the script, which is more interested in checking off items on a Spielberg to-do list than grappling with authentic sentiments. That's also true with regard to the guiding theme about moving forward by letting go of the past, an ironic notion for this backward-looking film, and one that—spoiler alert—extends to the many-limbed creature itself, another government-abused E.T. who's desperate to return home. Even the alien's motivation is told rather than dramatized, leaving the third act in a shambles, brimming with zooms into close-up and vistas of otherworldly chaos that can't compensate for the schematism of the finale's Alice-as-Faye-Wray plotting. All the while, Abrams's aesthetic mode—be it Michael Giacchino's John Williams-ish score or the director's trademark lens flares, which inconsistently heighten emotions (via streaks across eyes)—proves at once proficient and secondhand. Only George A. Romero disciple Charles seems alight with original life, cheerfully reflecting Abrams's (and the film's) youthful cinema love. Yet incapable of transcending its go-nowhere nostalgia, Super 8 ultimately feels stuck in a state of suspended supernatural-sci-fi adolescence.