When Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway got together in Brokeback Mountain, there were a few issues: Jake kept disappearing off on "fishing trips," Thanksgiving dinner took forever, and even in her most poignant moments, Hathaway simply couldn't keep the old-lady lipstick off her teeth. Things may go better for their reteaming in Ed Zwick's Love and Other Drugs if this trailer is any indication, because at least they've got Viagra on their side now.
The film is arriving with a faint whiff of Oscar hype thanks to a perfectly timed dispatch to Hollywood Elsewhere months ago that raved about Hathaway's performance as a lusty Parkinson's sufferer. Of course, you only get the "lust" part in this trailer, where Hathaway attacks Gyllenhaal's Viagra salesman for tricking her into toplessness (one wonders if she also attacked Zwick, since the film reportedly requires both actors to disrobe numerous times), then falls in love with him. It could be a whole lot deeper than it seems, but that final button where Gyllenhaal's roomie catches them about to get it on...well, do you really want to sell an Oscar movie with a joke we've already seen a thousand times in the ads for Going the Distance?
VERDICT: High hopes, with reservations.