Perhaps the reason  Love and Other Drugs seems like three different movies is that the film credits three screenwriters (Charles Randolph, Edward Zwick  and Marshall Herskovitz ) for the screenplay based on the book Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman by Jamie Reidy.  This may be the reason why Love and Other Drugs seems much less than the sum of its parts. But the film has a few laughs, a few tears and very attractive naked people.

It is the 90’s and Pfizer pharmaceutical rep Jamie (Jake Gyllenhaal) is on the fast track to success. His womanizing ways help him charm nurses and medical staff as he tries to push Zoloft and then Viagra. Jamie brings flowers, hides drugs from other companies and engages in a fist fight with a competing rep. He avoids serious relationships until he meets the spirited Maggie (Anne Hathaway) who also seems interested in sex without commitment. But Jamie is falling in love with Maggie and she is in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease.

My favorite scenes in the film are of Jamie and partner Bruce Winston (Oliver Platt) driving to hospitals and chasing doctors with Pfizer swag and drug samples. The characters never even discuss the ethical issues raised by their behavior, the drug companies or doctors like Stan Knight (Hank Azaria) who practically ask for bribes. This part of the film is funny, fast paced and relevant, and reminds of me of last year’s excellent Up In The Air. But then the film abruptly changes, and seems to be about a beautiful young woman’s struggle with a debilitating disease. Some of the better scenes in this section show Maggie finding solace at a gathering of others suffering from Parkinson’s and Maggie on a bus with senior citizens going to Canada to buy less expensive prescription drugs. Interesting ideas present themselves here, but they are addressed in a perfunctory manner, almost as if this were a made-for-television Lifetime movie. Sandwiched in between the disease and the drugs are comedy and sex. The comedy scenes involve Jamie’s stereotypical, overweight and slovenly brother Josh (Josh Gad).  The sex scenes are a bit more explicit than one might expect, and show Jamie having sex with various women, including the lovely Maggie.

Anne Hathaway gives the film’s best performance (she can add this to a list of fine performances that include Rachel Getting Married, Brokeback Mountain and The Devil Wears Prada) as the wonderfully complex Maggie. She is sexy and beautiful in those explicit love scenes, and makes Maggie seem dazzling and full of life. Hathaway also gives Maggie strength and dignity, despite the mawkishness of some of the film’s dialogue. Hathaway’s most moving scene occurs after Maggie attends the Parkinson’s group meeting and tells Jamie how hopeful she feels. We see the heartbreaking vulnerability beneath the defensive façade.  Jake Gyllenhaal hits only three notes here; rakish charm, sincerity and horny, but that could be the fault of the script and heavy handed direction by Edward Zwick. Both Hank Azaria (the doctor with questionable ethics) and Oliver Platt (Jamie’s drug rep partner) give nuanced performances that had me wanting to know more about their characters. Josh Gad lacks charm and subtlety as Jamie’s brother, a role that seems to be written for Jonah Hill or a pre-weight loss Seth Rogen.

Love and Other Drugs should have been a better film. In trying to be three films, it fails to be even one good film.

Love and Other Drugs. Directed by Edward Zwick. Jake Gyllenhaal (Jamie Randall), Anne Hathaway (Maggie Murdock), Oliver Platt (Bruce Winston), Hank Azaria (Dr. Stan Knight), Josh Gad (Josh Randall) and Gabriel Macht (Trey Hannigan). Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 2010.

Gail sees a movie appears every Wednesday.

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