Love and Other Drugs : Movie Review


Edward Zwick doesn't so much make movies and TV shows as he stuffs them, after the fashion of someone stuffing a sofa, or a turkey. Co-creator of the generationally flavored TV series "thirtysomething" and "Once and Again," and director of "Glory," "Legends of the Fall," "The Last Samurai" and a half-dozen other features, Zwick is an unabashed maximalist who tries to pack in more melodrama, more dialogue, more gags and more hit-you-over-the-head message delivery per minute than anyone else in Hollywood. See one Zwick movie and, for better or worse, you'll feel like you've seen three.

Even if we start with the premise that Zwick is the leading figure in the unfashionable but not-quite-defeated Dickensian media tradition that includes James L. Brooks and Oliver Stone, his new movie "Love and Other Drugs" is quite a mishmash of competing flavors. I mean that almost entirely in a good way. This love story stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a handsome but scurrilous pharmaceutical sales rep, circa 1996, who can't help falling in love with a woman with early-onset Parkinson's, perhaps because she is played by Anne Hathaway and is gorgeous, funny and kind of a badass.

See www.salon.com for full review

Author : Andrew O'Hehir