Love & Other Drugs: Review

This film was a genuine shock for me. I expected another rom-com and after hearing the synopsis of a Viagra salesman pursuing love in his unlikely – for want of a better term – sex friend, I presumed that it would be another boy/girl rom-com where he hates commitment but is intrigued enough by the chase, he gets cold feet a few months in, a fight ensues, she manages to change him and realise the error of his ways and an ‘everyone lived happily ever after’ scene ensues. I presumed wrongly.

This film is far from anything I’ve seen. It is the most fun a couple can have before the threat of a serious illness comes between them. Even the 2001 film Sweet November is somehow not the same. That film seemed bittersweet in comparison. Love and Other Drugs is based more on the will of someone to want to try and the realisation that if you want to be with a person it’s as they are damaged or not. Jake G

yllenhaal and Anne Hathaway star as the two lovers drawn together and struggling to separate in a bid to stop the eventual pain this illness will bring. It is a seeming whirlwind of confusion and emotion – do I selfishly stay with this person even though they will have to see me suffer, or do I leave them and spare them the pain?

Somehow, despite the fluctuating good day/bad day mood of the film, overall it is a comedy that almost makes the viewer believe that there is hope in the most unlikely places and that things that are worth it are worth everything. However cliché it may sound the film is the furthest thing from a cliché. It is sober and honest and has the most reluctant happy ending of a film I’ve seen yet.