It’s obvious that a lot of effort went into Love and Other Drugs. This is evident in the carefully maintained late-90s setting, but it’s most clearly seen in the acting talent involved. Jake Gyllenhaal is charming and funny, Anne Hathaway is absolutely radiant and their chemistry together is smoldering. The supporting cast is every bit as solid, with such great comedy actors as Hank Azaria, Oliver Platt and Judy Greer (I’ll get to Josh Gad later). From top to bottom, it’s greatly apparent that director Edward Zwick and his entire cast were giving all of their considerable talents toward making the absolute best of what they had.

Too bad that all they had was GARBAGE!

Let’s take it from the top: When we first meet Jamie Randall, our male lead, he’s selling electronics with all the skill, charm and sleaze of a professional con artist. Jamie’s a womanizing creep, but it helps that his rampant dick gets him fired. Also, I personally find it just a bit difficult to completely hate a guy who leaves his job in style and that’s exactly what Jamie does. So Jamie goes back to his family, where they all bicker over money, jobs, medicines and business. This is where the film started to lose me. I was, after all, watching a bunch of annoying rich yuppies talk about boring white-collar problems. So some guy has a high-paying job in software when his parents would rather he have a high-paying job in medicine. Cry me a fucking river. Oh, but it’s not like any of this matters, since roughly 95 percent of this scene’s content has precisely zero bearing on the rest of the movie and most of Jamie’s family is never seen again. I’m frustrated that the film wasted time on this scene, but I’m glad that it wasn’t done twice.

So Jamie finds work as a sales rep for Pfizer, selling drugs to doctors and hospitals. Jamie is comically unable to do this. I remind you that not ten minutes ago, we were watching the man shill audio/visual equipment with the zeal and showmanship of a circus ringleader, and now he’s a desperate schmuck who can’t sell medicine to a doctor. His energy and charisma just disappeared all of a sudden. The film lost me then if it hadn’t already, and I still had the entire movie left to sit through.

But really, this is all just a lesser symptom of the larger problem that Jamie has. Namely, he never provides us with any reason to root for him. Sure, the shallow and womanizing angle gradually fades away and Gyllenhaal is giving all the screen presence he’s got, but there’s simply nothing to this character. I think that this is best shown in the second act, when Jamie is asked to say four good things about himself and he can’t do it. At best, this makes him a nonentity who doesn’t know anything about himself. At worst, this makes him a lousy excuse for a human being, something that Jamie calls himself at several points in the film. And he never gets any better until the very end of the film.

Now, before I move on and talk about Maggie Murdock (Hathaway’s female lead), there’s something I’d like to address: She has early-onset Parkinson’s. The ads are treating this as a big spoiler — as are a number of reviews that I’ve read — but it really isn’t. Maggie’s condition is the subject of her introductory scene and it’s easily the most prominent defining trait of her character, so let’s cut the crap, shall we?

Maggie’s deal is that she loves sex, purely because it’s a distraction from her physical degradation and all the problems that she has in just being her. However, she doesn’t want the emotional attachment of being in love. This is partly because Maggie’s condition gives her a huge inferiority complex, dictating that she’s a lesser human who can only drag any friends or family down to her level. But mostly, she’s just too proud to admit that her body is failing and she needs help. She’d much rather spend all of her time and energy toward feeling sorry for herself.

There is a brief time in the second act when it seems like the film is going to take this in a new direction. We see Jamie take Maggie to hospitals and doctors around the country, putting her through various tests and asking about the most cutting-edge treatments, all in an effort to make Maggie better. Alas, this storyline is prematurely aborted when Maggie decides that she’s had enough. She’d much rather continue to live wallowing in her self-pity than to live with the false hope that there might be a Parkinson’s cure someday. Moreover, there’s no possible way that Jamie could be doing all of this because he loves Maggie and wants her to get well. No, it’s all because Jamie could never be able to love her unless she’s Parkinson’s-free. So our lead duo go right back to being their unlikable selves and the movie puts itself right back at square one. Good fucking God.

Oh, but of course our two leads eventually fall in love at the end. Hell if I know why, though. Jamie is asked at several points in the film why he’s so head-over-heels for Maggie and I don’t think he ever gave a satisfactory answer. All we get is that Maggie finally admits that she needs help, Jamie says he’ll be glad to support her and they both finally get on their way toward being sympathetic characters just in time for the film to end. GAH!

I suppose that I should talk about the Viagra angle that’s been so widely publicized. Really, the introduction of Viagra only serves two purposes in the story. First, it marks the point when Jamie’s career as a drug rep finally starts looking up. The guy can barely sell Zoloft to save his life, but put him in charge of selling a drug that practically sells itself and he’s suddenly a master salesman. Secondly, Viagra provides an excuse for dick jokes. On the positive side, there’s actually a surprising amount of restraint in just how much penile humor is used. On the negative side, Jamie’s inevitable four-hour erection is every bit as discomforting and unfunny as you’d expect. We also get a scene in which Maggie lists off a long series of dick puns, and not even Hathaway — with all her talent and charm — can make dick puns entertaining.

But what about our supporting cast? Well, let’s start with Hank Azaria, who plays Dr. Stan Knight. Pretty much immediately, this guy is shown to be a sleazebag. He’s a corrupt scumbucket who’ll buy from any drug rep who pays him or gets him laid. This is the kind of guy who injects himself with testosterone as preparation for a great night of non-stop orgies while in Chicago for a medical convention. But then, near the start of the third act, the doctor confesses to Jamie that all he really wanted was to help people and that he thought practicing medicine was a noble occupation when he first started out. It was all I could do to keep from shouting curses in response. I couldn’t believe that this character was trying to give us that line of crap after spending the whole movie establishing himself as a crook.

Then there’s Jamie’s brother Josh, a perverted and pathetic pile of FAIL played by Josh Gad. Words cannot do justice to how much I came to loathe this character. First, he was introduced in the aforementioned family argument scene. That’s when I had written him off as a mere pest. Then he was caught masturbating to a sex tape that Jamie made with Maggie. That’s when he went from grating to completely irredeemable. Then, as the third act starts, he forces his brother to attend a sex party and to bring him along, doing so in the most annoying, obtrusive and deplorable way possible. Once at the party, we see him try to get laid in scenes that are disgusting, unfunny and completely pointless. That’s when I wanted to scream myself hoarse into a pillow. If Josh had been removed from the movie entirely, it would’ve done nothing except spare the audience a world of pain and spare Josh Gad from his future career as a D-list Jack Black.

Oh, and for the record, this is Josh Gad. Just take a good look at that picture and then tell me how many blows to the head you would need before you’d believe that such a man could possibly share chromosomes with Jake Gyllenhaal. Seriously, how much alcohol would it take to see any family resemblance between the two? I can’t for the life of me understand what the guy was doing in this movie or what idiot decided that he’d make a convincing brother to our male lead.

We’ve also got Oliver Platt in the role of Jamie’s partner in sales, Bruce. Unfortunately, he’s a fast-talking and traitorous jerk who spends the whole movie riding on Jamie’s coattails toward his own ends. There’s Trey Hannigan, played by Gabriel Macht (who knew he still had a career after The Spirit?), a champion drug rep from another company. He’s a preening asshole who gives doctors outlandish bribes and physically assaults rival sales reps. Judy Greer gets a brief and totally thankless performance as a nurse who gets a one-night stand with Jamie, only to react with shock and outrage when the womanizing salesman tosses her aside.

So, let’s recap: Jamie is a chauvinistic pig, Maggie is an emo numskull, Dr. Knight is a corrupt quack, Trey is a tyrannical bully, Bruce is a two-timing egotist and Josh is a horny abomination. The movie revolves around these six characters and not a single one of them is likable or remotely sympathetic. The actors all clearly try their best, but these roles are all dead weights that drag the movie down with them.

Love and Other Drugs had potential. It really did. There are a few laughs here and there, most of the cast is very well-chosen, the 90s period setting is lovingly kept and the premise is ripe for a rom-com. Of course, I’d be lying if I said that the copious nudity didn’t help as well. If only this film had given us characters fit for the talent portraying them and had taken Josh out of the equation entirely, this movie might have stood a chance. As it is, this is a painful attempt at romantic comedy that I can’t in any way recommend.