As an avid fan of both Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, I must say I was extremely disappointed with Love and Other Drugs.  The film had the potential to become a cult classic, with two bankable stars and an original love story.  However, the plot line was underdeveloped and in order to compensate, the film was stuffed with at least a dozen unnecessary sex scenes that seemed to act as fillers for the nonexistent storyline.

Don’t get me wrong, Gyllenhaal and Hathaway have an immense amount of chemistry.  The problem is their individual characters.  Gyllenhaal plays Jamie Randall, a traveling pharmaceutical salesman who romances women in every scene for the first twenty minutes of the film.  He then meets Maggie Murdock, a spunky young woman who has early onset Parkinson’s disease.  Now this seems to be the formula for the perfect romantic comedy, right?

Fast forward an hour into the film.  It looks as if they’ve recycled the sex scenes because they’ve been shown so many times.  The sex scenes aren’t the only scenes that seem to be on a loop; their conversations about “not wanting to get serious” seems forced.  She insists that she will only hold him back with her disease and wants to keep it casual.  In essence, she keeps pushing him away and he keeps crawling back.  This is the loop the film seems to be on until the end of the film when she finally gives in.

At the end of the film, I sat, puzzled.  The film did not produce the “stand up and cheer” ending I was expecting.  I felt no emotional connection to either of the characters because they weren’t relatable.  The blame should not be placed on Hathaway and Gyllenhaal; they did all they could with a mediocre script.  I am harsher on the film than most people would be because my expectations for the film were so high.

If you are a fan of Gyllenhaal and Hathaway, go see the film.  It is entertaining to say the least.  It just doesn’t build up to the climactic end you would expect.  However, if this review has swayed you but you still wish to see a film with Gyllenhaal and Hathaway, see Brokeback Mountain instead.  No, I’m not joking.  It is a fantastic movie with more emotional depth and an ending that Love and Other Drugs should have had.