Not What The Doctor Ordered

I recently saw Love & Other Drugs on TV. Well, not all of it, but enough.  I remember seeing it when it came out in theatres in 2010.

It's about a drug rep for Pfizer who has a relationship with a patient with early-onset Parkinson's.  It's a fun, lively cast--starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway and featuring Oliver Platt, Josh Gad, Hank Azaria, Judy Greer and George Segal, among others.  But there's an obvious problem.

The film almost starts as a frolic.  The life of a drug rep, even before Viagra changes the game, is fairly new to the screen, and amusing.  And the first half of the film essentially plays as romantic comedy.

But then Hathaway starts to suffer more and more.  Okay, we were warned--she's got a degenerative disease, after all.  But the tone changes so much that it feels like it's not what we bargained for.

And I think the studio knew this was a problem. I just checked out the original trailer and it's what I expected.  There's no indication of the misery Hathaway will go through--it's sold as straight romantic comedy.  They knew where their bread was buttered. (And yet I wouldn't be surprised if it was the suffering that convinced a lot of people to make the film.)