"Love and Other Drugs" Killing my High

Anne Hathaway has been getting all kinds of Oscar buzz for her performance as the Parkinsons-afflicted love interest to smooth-talking Viagra sales rep Jake Gyllenhaal in Ed Zwick's "Love and Other Drugs" (Nov. 24), generating a continuous stream of good buzz from preview audiences. Whatever high these test screenings seem to have caused is beyond me, because the title alone is a major buzz kill and the initial trailer does nothing to suggest "Love and Other Drugs" is anything but a standard issue rom-com starring a pair of likeable leads.

Hathaway was brilliant in "Rachel Getting Married," deservedly nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars and every other 2008 awards ceremony, and she's certainly got the chops to make lightning strike twice. While the old romancing-the-dying-girl formula is proven Oscar bait, there is hardly a lick of suggestion in the trailer or this featherweight poster that anybody in "Love" is dying or suffering beyond perhaps the obligatory Walk of Shame that follows an embarrassing one night stand. (Why is Gyllenhaal covering his mouth like an Asian schoolgirl giggling over Hello Kitty stickers?)

The only suggestion I could find online of Hathaway looking sad about dying in "Love and Other Drugs"

Gyllenhaal is equally talented, proving himself more than capable of nailing a difficult, enigmatic character right down to the bone. He was exceptional opposite the late, great Heath Ledger in "Brokeback Mountain" (robbed for the 2005 Best Picture Oscar by the pandering racism mosaic "Crash") and mighty good in last year's intense melodrama "Brothers," as the obsessed journalist on the hunt for a serial killer in David Fincher's masterpiece "Zodiac," and in the Sam Mendes military tale "Jarhead." Lets not forget his hammy accent and Ken-doll abs in the summer's guiltiest pleasure "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," which all of you should see if you've ever enjoyed a "Mummy" or "Indiana Jones" movie. Seriously.

But Gyllenhaal's role in "Love and Other Drugs" looks, like just about everything else on display in the film's promo materials, pretty generic. The only reason to suggest "Other Drugs" might be holding out on the goods, besides the consistent early word from test screenings, is its R-rating, which the MPAA justified for "strong sexual content, nudity, pervasive language and some drug material." Hmmm...well, then. "27 Dresses" this certainly is not.

Check out the trailer for yourself and see what I mean, then contemplate this rating and what it might mean for the actual movie. Trailers and TV spots are, by definition, a deception, so it could just be a case like "The American" in which the savvy marketing team at the studio is looking to pull as many suckers from the target demo as possible with no concern for the impression given by trailers actually matching up with the film itself.  Time will tell: "Love and Other Drugs" opens November 24, just in time for Thanksgiving.