Is it a sex romp? A romcom? A medical melodrama? A sentimental misstep? Love and Other Drugs needs help, it suffers from acute schizophrenia, having been unable to define itself, instead co-opting every genre in the Hollywood playbook.
It’s excruciatingly at times, telling the story of an up and coming pharmaceutical sales rep (Jake Gyllenhaal) – is it a social ladder jumping story? - who sleeps with every nurse and receptionists he can find.
He begins a one-sided affair with a gorgeous woman in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease (Anne Hathaway) who needs the pills he can give her. It tries to be profound, emotional, funny, witty, and outrageous but winds up as an exercise in unedited self indulgence.