Anne Hathaway
Cover of Anne Hathaway

In Ed Zwick’s Love and Other Drugs (2010), a roguish pharmaceuticals rep (Jake Gyllenhaal) starts sleeping with, and falls for, a young woman with Parkinson’s disease (Anne Hathaway). 

As a romantic comedy the film is mostly unfunny.  As a sex comedy it’s let’s-do-it-like-rabbits stuff, and it’s generally vulgar.  (At one point, the Pfizer rep’s slimy brother makes an obscene joke at the dinner table.  The chap’s mother reprimands him, then giggles.  Wouldn’t want the audience to think Mom is a prude, would we?)   As a lover-with-a-disease drama, it’s maudlin.  Hathaway is often nude, but with nudity usually unsensual.  Her acting, I must say, is very good–it has bite and sophistication–whereas Gyllenhaal merely hams it up.  Trust me.

Hathaway was allowed to plug this no-account flick on Saturday Night Live.  No wonder my respect for that program is currently non-existent.