I went into last night’s screening of Edward Zwick’s “Love & Other Drugs” wanting to love it. I really did. There was an opportunity here to delicately balance comedy and drama, tell the story of a man’s journey to maturity against the backdrop of a very serious socio-political issue — the pharmaceutical industry — and tie together themes of responsibility and compassion. At the risk of being reductive, it could have been this year’s “Up in the Air.”
Unfortunately, the film just never finds that balance. There are too many ingredients in the soup, many of them tasty. But they clash in the mixture. Take Josh Gad’s portly, foul-mouthed brother to Jake Gyllenhaal’s suave corporate pill pusher. I laughed at this guy a lot, but it never felt organic to the film. It was arbitrary comic relief lacking any real commentary on the narrative.
Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway — a talented actress who will no doubt win an Oscar one day — does well by the material but she’s asked to play a one-trick, woe is me character who never finds a genuine end to her arc. And that could have been intriguingly the point, but it feels more like a concept stretched thin rather than one filled in with nuance.