Lust = Love ?

Here comes a movie which is educational for both men and women. First it should be noted that even though,  this movie was marketed as a romantic-comedy, many viewers will come to realize towards the end of the film, that it starts out as a romantic-comedy, but ends up turning into a romantic-drama. Not only because there is hardly anything to laugh about towards the end, but simply because the situation the to lovers find themselves in is anything but comic.
The movie starts out with the introduction of our main protagonist Jamie Randall (Jack Gyllenhaal) a flirty and self-confident young man, who seems to have lost his way in life. Fighting against becoming like his brother and father and trying to prove himself otherwise, he is selling electronics prior to getting fired and later finds himself selling pharmaceuticals for Pfizer in Ohio. Though that might describe his character a little, one very important factor of his personality was not yet mentioned. Jamie is a womanizer and he sleeps with a lot of women. A lot of them, but as in real life everybody meets the certain someone who changes their life and all of a sudden even a womanizer gets settled. Right?
In this case the lucky lady is Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway) a young woman with stage one Parkinson. The relationship starts out on sexual basis and turns into a relationship, which then turns into love. Parallel to this our drug representative Jamie switches from trying to get doctors to prescribe Zolofot, his companies ant-depression medicine, at which he is unsuccessful to Viagra, with which  he becomes a hit.
The movie is loosely based on an insider memoir by a former Viagra salesman, which might explain why the movie is set in the 1990s rather then in the present. The the second plot the film revolves around, as much as the love story part, is the success of the drug Viagra.
While usually love movies target a female audience "Love and other Drugs" seeks a male domain, which explains why the movie is told from Jamie Randall's perspective rather then Maggie Murdock's. The viewer hardly gets insides into Maggie's life when Jamie is not around. There is only two parts in the movie, where we see Maggie on screen unconnected to Jamie. These parts never hint at Maggie's feelings for Jamie, but they serve the soul purpose to show the audience how Maggie's condition worsens and to give the audience inside informations on Parkinson's.
Not only is this movie a parade of cliché's, but there are also lot of things that hardly makes sense. For example, why Jamie's brother who is a millionaire, ends up staying at Jamie's house after getting kicked out by his wife, rather than seeking a place of his own.
Lets come to the end and answer the statement made in the introduction of this article, the reason why this movie is educational. "Love and other Drugs", tells us that men at some stage in their life after some sort of realization, fall for one girl. EVEN A WOMANIZER. The cliché climax of the whole movie is not that a player decides to settle with one woman that he can't seem to live without, but that on top of it the woman he falls for is very sick. Maybe this movie with its very utopian believe will trigger a change in how men think about women.
So the message for all the women out there is that the general understanding of attractiveness of their sexual counterparts might change. Just give them a chance to get to know you on a deeper level, after that nothing can stop them from falling for you.
A wish that will not apply to most of us.
The message for all men out there is, start seeking for love on a deeper level and love a woman no matter what her condition.
From here on it is up to the viewer to decide what to make of this movie.
Make sure to stick till the end of the film, since the ending is a total revolution in cinema. You wish!