Imagine Woody Allen made a romantic entanglement movie about two humans so dysfunctional that simply existing is painful, and then strip away all of the charm, all of the witty, well-written dialogue and stuff in so much nudity that it becomes off-putting and you might have something close to Love And Other Drugs. It is a car crash of a movie, with massive frustrating sign-posts that suggest in other hands that it could have been really great. Everything is broken from the technicals (the sound work is abysmal) up to the characterisation and the script, which seeks emotional authenticity and ends up with two entirely unrelatable ogres. You're supposed to love neurotic romances because of the grotesque way they reflect your own short-comings, but if you're anything like Anne Hathaway's character, you're already way beyond help. That's nothing to do with her condition, obviously, but this is very much from the genre of films where it's fashionable for everyone to wear psychological issues as if they were badges, in entirely manipulative fashion, and for every male character - no matter how nice they might seem - to have a rotten, amoral core that transforms them irrationally into toxic monsters when the script needs it. Someone clearly thought having Hathaway take her clothes off a lot might distract from the rest of the film's shortcomings, but that shtick got old back when Carry On films were growing tiresome. If only they'd gone for substance and real emotion in her performance. If only. Which of these performances is your favourite and least favourite? Share yours below in the comments thread.
NCTJ-qualified journalist. Most definitely not a racing driver. Drink too much tea; eat too much peanut butter; watch too much TV. Sadly only the latter paying off so far.
A mix of wise-old man in a young man's body with a child-like wonder about him and a great otherworldly sensibility.
