(2010) "And then … you … you … you." A prodigal son with ADD, Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) in a family of overachievers - father James (George Segal) a doctor, his sister Helen a physician, and obese younger brother Josh (Josh Gad) a multimillionaire after an IPO sale of his software company - is a salesman in an electronics store, but Prince Charming to the ladies. After a "falling out with management," Jamie's introduced through Josh's arrangements to people with Pfizer, becoming one of the pharmaceutical company's 1997 sales reps following a six-week training program.

On the road into the Ohio River Valley with his immediate supervisor and mentor Bruce Winston (Oliver Platt), who desperately wants to return to Chicago where he has a home and family - "Pharma sales is a lot like dating. They want you to take them to dinner and pretend to expect nothing in return" - Jamie pushes Zithromax and Zoloft on doctors, trying to get his quota sales up. His principal competition is Prozac and its rep, among the top ten nationally, Trey Hannigan (Gabriel Macht), a former Marine with Eli Lilly.

By offering Dr Stan Knight (Hank Anzaria), an internist with influence over his medical colleagues, a $1,000 preceptorship in order to shadow as an intern, Jamie gains access (playing "naughty nurse" with a receptionist) and an eyeful when a patient with early-onset Parkinson's disease, Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway), reveals her beautiful (spider-bitten) breast.

Based on Jamie Reidy's memoir, Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman, this romantic dramedy from director Edward Zwick (screenplay co-written with Charles Randolph and Marshall Herskovitz) brings together a girl trying to escape through sex from her fears of the future as an invalid with a guy, who in the words of his oafish brother hates women: "Why else would you screw so many of them?"

Working as a waitress and taking people on bus trips to Canada for meds, no longer able to pursue her love of painting, Maggie tells Jamie, "I really like having sex," but just wants to keep it simple ("Don't use that word … 'girlfriend'") without developing into a relationship (bad situation earlier with married man at the time of her diagnosis). But she suspects Jamie of having "latent humanity" when he has difficulty during lovemaking: "All men care about is performance."

Jamie's boorish brother moves in with his older sibling after getting thrown out of the house by his wife (easy to see why since I kept wishing Jamie would tell him to get lost as well), which provides crude comedic occasions but more importantly credibility of Jamie's loyalty and potential for patience under duress.

When Jamie learns from Maggie (obsessive reader of newest drug literature) that Pfizer has developed a vasodilator to treat impotence, he convinces Bruce that he's the ideal salesman for the sex drug: "This is a revolution." The attractive couple videotape their intimacy.

In Chicago for a pharmaceutical conference, Jamie (proving he's not only "very trainable" but very successful) takes Maggie along, who finds a group meeting for those with Parkinson's where he's privy to the ominous confession of the husband of a woman with the disability: "It's not a disease, it's a Russian novel." Exhausted following a frustrating round of visits to specialists and tests across the country at Jamie's insistence, Maggie finally tells him: "Apparently you need to know that I'll get better in order to love me."

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Copyright © 2011 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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