LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS

Last night, after drunkenly embarrassing myself on Facebook through offers to pay people to be my friends in order to not be bored anymore (post now deleted, before you all try and look for the evidence. And no, nobody took me up on the offer) I decided I would go and see Love and Other Drugs, a film which has apparently divided critics (it has a 50% Tomatometer - you don't get more divided than that, surely?) with a certain Heathers enthusiast reprimanding my decision to book tickets and even describing the film as "unbearably shit". It was therefore with some trepidation that I sat down, now a little more sober, and prepared myself for the GyllenWay/HathaHaal experience. Half an hour in, and my sister and I were sharing a confused glance. And not in a "how the hell could Josh Gad seriously be believed to be related to Jake Gyllenhaal" way, but in a "are we stupid for thinking this isn't shit?" way. A very niche form of confused glance indeed. Was I still more inebriated than I had previously thought? Was I reacting to some form of perfect bottom overload? Or was the film in fact, fairly fucking decent? Let's examine the facts.

- Both Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway provide solid, convincing and wholly charismatic performances.
- HathaHaal are naked a lot. This can only be a good thing.
- The script genuinely sparkles with near genius in places. In other places, sure it's nothing special, but it's nonetheless of a far higher calibre than your run of the mill Katherine Heigl/Jennifer Aniston featuring Rom Com. Not least because there are several LOL funny moments. I laughed only a couple of times less than I did during The Social Network and Catfish. I don't believe I have ever genuinely laughed at a single word Katherine Heigl or Gerard Butler have uttered. Not even in a "you're fucking retarded" kind of situation.
- You might actually give a shit what happens to both of the leads.
- Josh Gad is amazing.
- Hank Azaria has at long last been given a role which is entirely un-shit and un-involving a lispy, foreign accent.

Unfortunately, I suppose I had better also examine these facts:
- There is some seriously dodgy editing at play, most noticeable during HathaHaal's first coffee "date". The editing was so bad here in fact, my hands actually curled into fists and I had to stop myself from making an uncomfortable kicked-cat noise.
- The last 10 minutes of the film are nauseatingly eye rolling inducing. I think I actually preferred the end to P.S. I Love You. Shut up, yes I've watched it.
- Although refreshingly managing to avoid the tedium of every other Rom Com in many ways, we are still presented with the age old cliché that the only type of woman in the world capable of curing a playa of his playa-ness is to be stunningly beautiful, possess the best pair of natural breasts he will ever know, be willing to provide spur of the moment blow-jobs in a nonchalant fashion (the art of the nonchalant blow job is particularly difficult to achieve), have some A-game cutting, witty repartee up your sleeve while also maintaining an infrequently apparent level of vulnerability, best achieved in this instance through a degenerative disease. Got it?

Despite the flaws as listed above, I think a far fairer Tomatometer rating would be around the 75% mark. At least I think so. All this struggling through the Highs and Lows of the film has left my mind in a collapsed heap.