Love & Other Drugs Review

Spoilers ahead

I remember when this was first released in 2010 and it was talked about a lot because people were shocked that Anne Hathaway was nude in it. In the very religious area I lived in, the nudity and sex scenes were the only things that I heard about - not in a positive way either. I didn't even know what the plot was! I was only 15 at the time and it's an R rated movie, so I didn't really bother to look into it more if I couldn't even watch it in theaters anyway.

I had forgotten about it by the time I was old enough to see R rated movies. But I was scrolling through Hulu looking for movies to distract myself from a pain flare and it was recommended. I'm a fan of Anne Hathaway, so I decided to watch it.

The movie is about a man, Jamie, who is sort of the black sheep of his family: a lot of his relatives are doctors and generally successful people, but he sells stereo equipment. That is, until he slept with a coworker and got fired. His younger brother sets him up with a job as a pharmaceutical rep for Pfizer. Through this job, he meets a woman, Maggie, who has early onset Parkinson's Disease.

They have a sort of "enemies to lovers" relationship. He becomes a very successful salesman when he's assigned to sell Viagra and they fall in love. He starts to become obsessed with the thought of finding a cure and begins taking her to different doctors, hospitals, and clinics in pursuit of a cure.

She becomes increasingly frustrated with the constant appointments that are destined to fail, and breaks up with him. He tries to contact her, but she stays away. He gets the dream job assignment, but he doesn't feel happy without her. He finds her and confesses his feelings and they get back together. He decides to decline the job and stays there and applies to medical school instead.

While there certainly were nudity and sex scenes, the plot is very good too! Though Anne Hathaway doesn't have Parkinson's Disease, she did a great job of portraying it in her role, Maggie. She has stage one - mild symptoms, namely tremors and changes in walking and posture. In order to cope, she doesn't date and the relationship begins as mostly a hookup situation.

Since this is a romcom, the overall character development of Jamie is that he goes from a womanizing douchebag with low self esteem to a caring person who believes in himself enough to go to medical school. That's fairly common in the genre and might leave a slightly bitter taste in some people's mouths due to him caring about a disabled person being the catalyst; however, he does fall into the pattern of trying to make her better and has to learn to accept that there isn't a cure.

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But Jamie isn't the reason I want to talk about the movie - Maggie is. In the beginning, she's very insecure about her disease and needing help - to the point that she pushes people away and tries to hide any vulnerability. This is exactly the type of internalized ableism that most chronically ill people tackle with, particularly at the beginning of their illness and any time when symptoms drastically worsen. The fear of being a "burden" or "too much" often holds us back from developing relationships and hobbies that we would really enjoy.

She starts to shed this attitude as she becomes more comfortable with Jamie. The two events that I can pinpoint as her growing beyond this are when she drops and breaks a glass and he comes back to comfort her, but also when they go to Chicago. A woman invites her to the "Unconvention" across the street from the pharmaceutical convention.

At the Unconvention, a large room full of Parkinson's patients and their loved ones are assembled to listen to patients talk about their experiences, vent, and make jokes. Maggie has never met others with her condition and that sense of a community and no longer feeling alone encourages her to enjoy life and stop hiding from it. The sense of community and not feeling alone is just as important in the real world as in this movie.

When we feel like we're suffering alone and nobody can begin to understand us, we easily spiral into dark places and destructive coping mechanisms. Initially, I was somewhat isolated and that feeling of loneliness sometimes prevented me from wanting to try and I wanted to just crawl into my bed. It wasn't until I felt that I was part of a bigger community that would both hear and support me that I started to try to live instead of just surviving.

There are several scenes that I connected with, and that realism sets this movie apart from the one note trope of "man falls in love with a sick woman, and is inspired to be a good person". That raw, emotional and realistic development of their relationship and the mistakes that they make is similar to what happens when a sick person and a healthy person fall in love. Though the main plot listed is their romance, it really was Maggie's growth into accepting her body and learning how to live in it.