Love and Other Drugs

A slacker ladies’ man with a smooth line of bedroom patter (Jake Gyllenhaal) goes to work selling pharmaceuticals for Pfizer, where he meets a no-nonsense woman (Anne Hathaway) who presents a challenge by being immune to his superficial charms. This one gets by on the strength of its stars and a strong supporting bench (Hank Azaria, Oliver Platt, Judy Greer, George Segal, Jill Clayburgh), but the script (by Charles Randolph, Marshall Herskovitz and director Edward Zwick, from Jamie Reidy’s book) is an annoying hodgepodge of clashing trendy genres: a Lifetime channel disease-of-the-week weeper-cum-raunchy sex comedy, with satirical jabs at Big Pharma and desultory pitches for health-insurance reform and Parkinson’s awareness. The movie tries to be too many things and ends up being not much of anything.