Love and Other Drugs

You may say that this is just another romantic drama with Anne Hathaway batting her big brown eyes at the camera and putting every male with a sex-drive into a sinful trance. Well, you'd be partially correct. However, in this romantic drama, we get to see a lot of her personal real estate, so to speak.

Love and Other Drugs, a movie based on the non-fiction book Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman, stars Anne Hathaway as Maggie Murdock, a Parkinson's patient. She crosses paths with drug salesman Jamie Reidy (Jake Gyllenhaal). Mr. Reidy is a bit of an underachiever in his family, but an aggressive overachieving drug salesman shark.

After their initial encounter, Jamie pursues Maggie, despite her outrage at his behavior and abuse of his position. However, they eventually come to like each other, despite her long-term prognosis and expected fate. Jamie, however, meets someone at a convention for people with Parkinson's who is a spouse of a patient, who gave him the advise to run and leave her now. Now Jamie begins to have doubts about their relationship.

Despite the grim circumstances of the movie, Jamie and Maggie have quite an interesting relationship. And their relationship is graphically depicted with lots of nudity. Who knew that Anne Hathaway like to be so naked? Full backal-nudity. (is that a word? Is it the opposite of full-frontal nudity???). I'd say only about 5% of her was not shown on camera in this movie. And I'm not ashamed to say it was fantastic.

For the ladies, or the guys who enjoyed Broke Back Mountain, Jamie shows a bit of butt.

Directed by renowned director Edward Zwick (Glory, Legends of the Fall, Courage Under Fire, The Last Samurai, and Blood Diamond), Love and Other Drugs is Rated R for nudity, strong sexual situations, nudity, language, nudity, drug use, and nudity.

Also staring in Love and Other Drugs was Oliver Platt, Hank Azaria, and some others I don't know.

Overall, this movie is just average, perhaps about a 3.3 on a 5 scale. But if you're looking for "cinematography", this one is a solid 4.3.

Bride Wars

I'm not sure if this movie should be categorized as a romantic comedy or a fighting comedy. Though I guess any movie with "War" in the title is less romantic and more fighting.

Bride Wars stars Anne Hathaway, the attractive brunette with her big irresistible brown doe-like eyes, and Goldie Hawn's daughter Kate Hudson (who looks horrible in bangs - I sounded totally gay there, didn't I?). They have been best friends since childhood and both of them are now getting married. Liv (Hudson) is a type-A personality, go-getter, never loses, and Emma (Anne) is the reserved, shy, but friendly school teacher.

Both brides-to-be want to get married at The Plaza in New York, not to be confused with the condominiums of the same name in Ocean City, Maryland. They schedule their weddings for two non-overlapping days in June. However, when an error is made by the incompetent assistant of Marion St. Claire (Candice Bergan), New York's most sought after wedding planner, the girls end up with their weddings scheduled for the same day. Neither girl will agree to move their date as the next available date is three years away and thus sets off the bride wars.

The girls begin a series of hysterical pranks that get meaner and out of control as the movies rolls along. As you can image from this age of predictability in movies, the pranks drive them apart to the point where they start hating each other. Throughout the movie you will wonder which one will end up caving in first.

Bride Wars is a 2009 movie directed by Gary Winick who also directed the remake 13 Going on 30 and Charlotte's Web. The movie is PG for suggestive content, language, and though not indicated by Netflix, some minor violence and is 89 minutes long.

Despite it's predictability, I found the pranks to be really funny. And it was nice to see Anne Hathaway rut (Brokeback Mountain, Becoming Jane, Rachel Getting Married), though Get Smart was funny. However, because of its overwhelming predictability I will have to give it 3 stars.

Rachel Getting Married

I once read that Anne Hathaway has doe-like eyes. I think that is right on. Best known for her portrayal of Mia Thermopolis in the Princess Diaries series, Hathaway has grown up and is now fancied by many a man.

In her latest movie, Rachel Getting Married, she gets all slummed up and plays Kym, the drug-addict sister of the bride. Tensions are high from the beginning of the movie and they never ease. Kym has been in drug rehab, but continues to be brought down by a tragic event in her past.

To make things worse for her, the family only offers her shallow support as they still blame her for the tragic event. Not helping the matter is Kym's inconsistency in life and in rehab.

Meanwhile, Rachel is getting married in the most eclectic marriage ceremony ever performed. She is marrying an artsy African-American, which is really not even a conflict in the movie, which is nice to see. However, Kym, Rachel and the rest of the family are in a constant struggle that lasts throughout the movie.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not really into artistic films. I should have been clued in when Netflix mentioned that the movie was nominated for Best Feature Independent Spirit Award. I think the entire movie was filmed with a cellphone video camera. At best it was filmed with a held-held camcorder. This got to be really annoying. Especially when people were standing in front of the camera or when substances got on the lens of the camera and it was not removed.

I found the plot to be absolutely ridiculous and without end. The acting wasn't too bad, but when you're acting to a horrible story, it doesn't help too much.

The movie, which was directed by Jonathan Demme (Philadelphia , Silence of the Lambs, & Manchurian Candidate), also stars Rosemarie DeWitt as Rachel, Sebastian Stan as Walter, Kym's boyfriend, and Debra Winger as Abby, their nutty mother.

The movie is Rated-R for language, some brief sexuality, smoking (Anne Hathaway, nonetheless), and horrible editing.

As you can probably tell by now, I didn't like the movie. I give it 1 star and recommend that you avoid this movie, unless you are an artsy film student.

Get Smart

I saw Get Smart in the theater 25 times. Would you believe on bootleg copy before it was released on DVD? How about last Tuesday?

Steve Carell stars as Maxwell Smart, the quirky gizmo-loving detective for the American intelligence agency known as CONTROL. We works along side Agent-99, played by the young and beautiful Anne Hathaway.

As you will remember from the Mel Brooks-produced 1960's show, Maxwell Smart fought against the implied Russian agency known as KAOS. Always lucky, but never Smart, he always seemed to get his man, though with a heavy hand from Agent-99. If you were born in the 1980's, you're definitely thinking right now, "Get Smart was a TV show in the 1960's???"

This movie adaption of the TV show has many familiar faces, such as former wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, former Sesame Street star Alan Arkin, and a Godfather, James Caan. And this movie does not disappoint. They cleverly included many of the sight-gags and vernacular of the original TV show. Steve Carell is funny, as he usually is. And Anne Hathaway is sexy - as she has been since the day she turned 18. Prior to that day, this editor had no relevant opinion of her.

Get Smart is 110 minutes long, 10 minutes short of 2 hours. It is rated PG-13 for some crude humor, mild violence, language, and would you believe plentiful nudity? If you blinked, then you missed it by that much.

I really liked this movie and I give it 4 stars. Make sure you see this movie.