Dec 12 - "I have never known anybody who actually believed that I was enough"

Love and Other Drugs (2010)
dir. Edward Zwick (Glory, 1989)

CAST
Jake Gyllenhaal (Jarhead, 2005)
Anne Hathaway (Alice in Wonderland, 2010)
Oliver Platt (Lake Placid, 1999)
Judy Greer (Jawbreaker, 1999)
Hank Azaria (Pretty Woman, 1990)
Jill Clayburgh (Running with Scissors, 2006)
Kimberley Scott (Flatliners, 1990)

I've begun that bad habit where I end up seeing movies that I EXPLICITLY pointed out not wanting to see. I saw this one a few days ago with my stepmother and my aunt, and I can't remember any lines from the movie to put in the blog title, and since it's so new I can't look up any lines on the internet.

So I had to go to the movies with my Aunt Holly and my Stepmother Sarah. I thought: Oh! Let us view Love and Other Drugs for some innocuous fun times! Aunt Holly invited a septuagenarian friend!

And here's why you have to do your research before heading to the cinema, everybody: 1) Cyrus was not very funny at all; 2) Love and Other Drugs has a LOT of sex in it. And bare asses. And so many breasts. SO I was a little chagrined to see so much nudity and getting-it-on with relatives present. But actually, Aunt Holly is a good sport and went off on how Anne Hathaway talked about her nude scenes with Jay Leno but that Jake Gyllenhaal seemed more reticent to do so.

On the whole, I could see how much of this sexiness was important to further the story. However, I think a few times, like the part where Gyllenhaal's character
and his brother (I just realized that the female lead has no friends) go to a "pajama party" which only functions to drive home the point that neither is into chasing skirts anymore.

The female characters, besides Hathaway's, are all shallow and transparent. They are either conventionally pretty or else pointedly unattractive (Sorry, Judy Greer, I still like you). Either way, they are falling over themselves to impress Gyllenhaal (The one lady who rejects him, a successful pharmaceutical rep., does an abrupt about face near the end and gets its on with Gyllenhaal and another lady). Basically, all women are interchangeable and whorish, except Anne Hathaway's character because she is "scared of being vulnerable." Because only reclusive artists can have emotional pain, right? It couldn't be that Judy Greer's receptionist character had some shit going down inside her as well. Because she's plain, and acts nice to her friends anyway, and smiles when she meets a cute fella'. Whatever.

My LEAST FAVORITE trope in film = The free spirit. (I hope i didn't go off about this already)
Guilty Parties
1) Natalie Portman as "Sam" in Garden State (2004)
2) Zooey Deschanel as "Summer" in (500) Days of Summer (2009)
3) Charlize Theron as "Sara" in Sweet November (2001) - I suppose the same could be said for Sandy Dennis in the 1968 original, but in my opinion that movie invented the trope, so it doesn't count as derivative (Like your grandmothers occasional racist slur, old things can be forgiven a multitude of sins).
4. all of them!